Sydney: Season Two
by CRebel
Summary: "All of the things that used to be a given, they're gone. And me? Me, Sydney Rose Dixon, I lost my mother and my grandparents and my uncle and my friend Tyler and almost everyone else I ever loved or even liked a little." Sydney moves on with her dad and the group, leaving Atlanta and winding up on a farm, where she and the others encounter new problems in a world gone to hell.
1. Memories and Goodbyes

**Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead or any plotlines or characters from the TV show or graphic novels.**

**. . . . .**

The world ended. Jacqui, who's dead now, once said _The world seems to have come to an end - _I can hear her saying that, clear as a bell. The world ended, all because dead people started walking around trying to eat everything that moves, including people. Now there are no schools or hospitals or cell phones or the President, not anymore. All of the things that used to be a given, they're gone.

And me? Me, Sydney Rose Dixon, I lost my mother and my grandparents and my uncle and my friend Tyler and almost everyone else I ever loved or even liked a little. I lost both of my houses. The .22 rifle my dad taught me to shoot with. All of my clothes and books and movies and everything. I lost my great little throwing knife and I lost the one picture I had of my mom.

I'm just saying – I lost _a lot_.

And now, just when I was starting to think I was kind of running out of stuff I could lose, my dad's truck is being taken from me, too.

That's where I am now. In his truck. The passenger side, where I've always ridden. It's my spot.

The others – our group's smaller than ever, with just me and my dad, the Grimes family, Sophia and Carol, Dale, Andrea, Glenn, T-Dog, and Shane – they're all outside, weaving around, busy as bees, talking in serious tones because that's just how people talk these days. We're in front of an empty nursing home we stayed in last night, the place my dad and some others came across when they were searching for my uncle (who Rick Grimes handcuffed to a roof, but that's another story that I really don't want to get into), only back then the place had people. Old people and the young people who were protecting them. But when we came back to it yesterday, looking for shelter after the CDC exploded, the nursing home had been raided and all of the people there had been shot in the head. Murdered. Their bodies left for the walkers.

I don't want to think about that. Bad enough we had to spend the night in there. I slept with my head on Dad's leg and it was still hard.

Anyway, not the point.

What I was getting at is that the people outside of the truck – my dad included – they're all working in the sun, helping, even the other kids. Most of the group is organizing and moving what little stuff we have left – what little stuff that didn't get blown up – between the vehicles, and my dad and T-Dog are finishing up sucking the fuel out of the ones we're leaving behind . . . meaning Shane's jeep, T-Dog's church van, and my dad's truck. My dad's truck. _My_ truck.

And right now – and even though I _should _be helping – I sit in here. Because I have to say goodbye. I breathe out, long and slow, and try to figure out how to say it. I really don't want to.

I never thought too much about this truck, if I'm being honest. It was just _there_. A fact of life. I never considered all it had to do with, but it's coming to me now . . . This truck, it's a moving, living part of my weekends with Dad. The weekends I loved, perfect days when I didn't have to be a lawyer's well-mannered daughter but I didn't have to watch out for walkers, either. This truck is part of tracking a deer through the woods, part of shooting bottles off a fence in the middle of nowhere. This truck smells like sweat and dirt and the cigarettes my dad never has anymore. My dad, my dad used to let me sit on his lap and steer this truck down backroads, and I was good at it. This truck drove me to and from Dad's place. It was my hello and it was my goodbye.

Now it's just a goodbye. One more goodbye. One more piece of my old life going down the drain.

A shadow comes over me. My dad's familiar arms, dirty and scarred, cross over the window sill. My goodbye's about to be cut short, I guess. I keep my eyes down, and before he can speak I go ahead and say, "I know we have to leave it," because I don't want him to tell me why again. I _know _ why – fuel. Survival.

It's still hard.

Dad sighs. I feel it in my hair. Neither of us talks for a second, but then he reaches an arm in and opens the glove box. I watch him fiddle around for a while, shoving aside crumpled papers and a Skoal can before he draws out his old wallet, made of brown leather and beat up as anything. "Had to make sure to grab this."

Somehow I find a little smile, because I'm tough about hard stuff. "Whatcha gonna buy?"

"Ain't like I ever had much money to spend." He opens the wallet up and tosses it in my lap. "But a man needs a picture of his best girl, don't he?"

I'm the only picture in his wallet. I have been for as long as I can remember, though it's always my school picture and he changes it out every time I go up a grade. But school pictures hadn't been taken yet when the walkers came, and so the photo my dad has is my year-old fourth-grade picture. That was the first Picture Day I had my ears pierced, and Mom let me wear her favorite diamond earrings and the necklace to match. She made me sign a letter swearing to bring everything back in good shape. The diamonds . . . They're beautiful, even just captured in a picture, but they don't look as good on me as they did on her.

My mother. I can see her in my head, still . . . But how long will that last?

"I lost my picture of Mom. It was in my bag back in the CDC." My voice is small. I meet my dad's eyes, and very quietly – but controlled, I'm not about to cry – I ask, "What if I forget what she looks like?"

For a moment, we just look at each other. We do that a lot, my dad and I, just look and not talk. He and Mom used to do it, too. Now, though, now he's looking at the wallet. He glances back at me, but then his eyes go to the wallet again and this time so does his hand and he picks the wallet up. His fingers go to a slot I don't think I've ever noticed and he pulls out a blank piece of paper I don't think I've ever seen. He hands it to me. "Here."

The paper's thick and folded into fourths. I unfold it and then inhale.

It's the three of us. We're outside somewhere, under a clear sky, on a long stretch of very green grass dotted with dandelions. I'm in the left half of the picture, just a toddler, young enough that I'd let Mom put a bow in my hair, and I'm watching something the photo doesn't show. To the right, on the other side of a quilt I recognize from my Nana's house, my dad sits in one of those metal folding chairs, and he has his arms wrapped around her, around _Mom_, she's on his lap, and she's gorgeous_. _Her hair's been hot-iron curled, she's in cut-off jeans I can't remember her ever wearing, and she's grinning and watching me, and she has an arm around Dad's neck, and Dad, he looks happy. They both look so happy. It's weird but I love it.

"When was this?" I ask Dad in an almost-whisper. My hand's trembling, making the picture shake, so I have to rest it on my knee.

"Fourth of July. You'da been a few months shy of two."

"So you were still married?"

"Yep." He snaps his wallet closed. "You keep that. Girl should have a picture of her mom."

I swallow. "Thanks."

He nods once. A moment passes. Then he taps my arm with the back of his hand. "C'mon. Time to head out."

I make myself take my eyes from the picture. "Can I ride with you?" With the truck gone, my dad's going to be riding my uncle's motorcycle from here on out. That makes the whole thing a little better – just a little – because I _do _love to ride the motorcycle, can't say otherwise.

But my dad's shaking his head. "No. Long trip, we don't know what we might run into. You're gonna ride in the RV."

I'm disappointed but I don't argue. Never helps, with Dad, and he hates it when I do it. I take in the picture one more time – my _mom_ – and then carefully fold it back up, right along the older creases. My dad opens the door for me and I hop out, tucking the photo deep into my back pocket. I notice Dad's wearing the vest I love, the leather one with the wings on the back. I also notice that his eyes go over the truck, and that his hand may linger on the handle for a bit too long, but that's as close as he gets to looking sad. My dad, he's real strong. He doesn't make a show of being upset about things. I'm trying to get as good as he is about that.

He slams the door. We step away and Dad's hand runs down the back of my head once, and he tells me to be good. Then he goes off to the motorcycle, waiting and ready, crossbow already hooked on back.

And me, I steal just one second to look around. Carl and his parents, Lori and Rick (our new _leader_, I think, and I didn't want to like him at first, but now I think _maybe_ he might be alright), are riding with Sophia and her mom, Carol, in Carol's Cherokee. Looks like they're all ready to go, Sophia's climbing in right now, clutching that doll Eliza Morales gave to her days ago. Sophia's twelve but doesn't really act her age. My eyes catch on Carl next, and he catches me looking – wait, I'm catching _him _looking – and I turn away immediately, pressing my lips together. Carl and I, we were almost-friends early on, but these days we don't get along very well. He doesn't understand me. I don't care.

I check out the RV now. Shane's standing at the end, holding his shotgun, like he always seems to be. Andrea's walking to the door, frowning, as usual. Andrea . . . She wanted to stay behind in the CDC. Not like me, because I didn't_ really _ want to stay behind –

I crack my fingers, chew my knuckle. Don't want to think about that. Not even supposed to, my dad said to forget it.

Anyway, Dale and Glenn are by the door, too. Now so's T-Dog. I hear the motorcycle revving up. We're really all ready. Ready to go, ready to leave Atlanta.

I look at the sky and I think of Merle and wonder if he's still somewhere in the city. But if my dad doesn't want to hang around and look for him, I guess the odds must be slim. I wonder if he's dead and then push that thought away because it's just so bad. I'd like for my dad to talk more about Merle and what he thinks about all that, but I'm not gonna press him, not anytime soon. He's got enough on his mind.

I look up at the nursing home behind me. I don't think my dad believes in heaven, which kind of bothers me, but my mom did. My dad's right on a lot of things, but so was my mom, and so I think I'll think that she's right this time, and I imagine now that all of the dead people inside of there, inside of that sad nursing home, are in heaven. What can it hurt to at least imagine?

And finally, I look at my dad's truck, one last time. Dirty and banged up and lonely and part of so much of me. My throat swells, but I scowl and tell myself to _stop it_, and I straighten up and turn on my heel and march right up and into the RV, before anyone else. No crying. I've been crying too much lately, and that's got to stop. I'm stopping it.

Besides, there's no reason to cry. We're going to Fort Benning. We're going to Fort Benning, and things are going to be okay there. We're going to be _safe_ there, and my dad and I are going to find some woods and go hunting and I'll get a new .22 and he'll get a new truck and maybe someday we'll meet up with Merle again and everything's going to be good.

Yeah.


	2. Lake of Cars

T-Dog's not very good at poker. Maybe I should have expected that from someone who drives – drove – a church van.

"Three kings," I say, laying the cards on the bed we're sitting on and using as a table. We're in the back room of the RV, T-Dog and I, just killing time. Wish we had something to bet, I'd be making out like a bandit. Like now – T-Dog looks at his hand, snorts, and slaps the cards down on the cover in a way that lets me know I've got him beat. I check his cards anyway, and the ones spread in a line between us, and he's only got a pair of tens, not impressive.

"Alright, kid," he says, stretching, as I grin but try not to make it mean-looking, "I'm done. There's only so many times I'm willin' to get beat in Texas Hold'em by a little girl."

"I ain't that little." I gather the cards together, ready to shuffle again. I'm good at shuffling. Merle showed me how to do it good a long time ago.

"Who taught you to play like that? Your dad?"

"And my –" I stop then, because I know T-Dog and my uncle didn't get along. Merle used to call him one of the really bad words that my mom told me never, ever to say and that I even only ever heard from my dad – who doesn't exactly shy from bad words – a few times, and always with Merle. "Yeah," I rephrase in a hurry, glancing down, "Dad. We don't have to play poker. We could try somethin' different if – "

There's a long, loud squeak from under us. Everything shifts forward, including me, as the RV slows and comes to stop. That's all that needs to happen for me to drop the cards and high-tail it to the front of the RV, past Andrea and Shane and the guns at the table, to where Dale's at the wheel and Glenn's riding shotgun, and I see what's outside and have to hold back a gasp.

It's like a traffic jam but worse, much worse, because all of the cars are abandoned, I'm almost positive. There's not a soul in sight. A lot of the vehicles aren't even on the road, they're just off in the grass, big metal chunks of road kill. I see some that are flipped over – on their sides or even topside-down – some that are bumped and crashed into each other, and there are so many open car doors and car trunks and windows . . . And right in front of us, in the middle of this wide highway road, is a loading truck, lying on its side like a dead animal.

"What happened?" I whisper. I feel Shane towering over me, seeing just what I'm seeing. Which is something bad.

Nobody answers me. Nobody has an idea, I guess, or at least nobody has an idea past _The walkers did it. _Glenn, he sighs a long sigh and then looks at his map.

I hear my dad coming and move my eyes away from the truck, to him, riding right up to Dale's window. I don't like him being out there alone, I realize out of nowhere, but I keep my mouth shut, of course. I just lean against the driver's seat as Dale calls down, "See a way through?"

My dad looks behind him and then jerks his head back, signaling for Dale to follow. I check Dale to see if he gets it, and he nods at Dad, so I think he does. My dad drives off behind the RV and shows up on the other side a few seconds later, riding on ahead, really slow. Dale makes the RV go after him.

"Uh . . . maybe we should just go back," says Glenn. He's stretched out the map in front of him. "There's an interstate bypass –"

"We can't spare the fuel," Dale interrupts.

I'm starting to hate fuel.

And so we weave through the cars. My dad leads the way. We drive over clothes and toys and lots and lots of other stuff, just cast around the place like nothing, and we pass so many empty cars . . .

Except some of them aren't empty.

We've only been moving again for a few seconds when my eye catches on a bright blue station wagon and I see a corpse through the open door. Not a walker, just a corpse, and even from this distance, I can tell it's been here a while. I take my eyes off it. I'm so used to walkers that I forgot how real, _real _dead bodies look. And I don't really want to remember. They're not _worse _than the walkers, but they're different and I don't like it at all.

"Jeez," Glenn breathes a minute later as we come upon a particularly thick span of cars, and I squint my eyes, and out of nowhere I'm remembering this lake my dad and uncle took me to once, where the water looked like it went on and on until it touched the sky. Like it went straight into it. That's what this car jam is doing – going straight into the sky. "Can we _get_ through here?"

He's barely said that when there's a harsh clanking noise that spooks me a little, then the squealing sound of an engine acting up – nope, giving out. Smoke rises in front of Dale's windshield, blocking out my dad and the lake of cars. The RV stops moving again.

Dale stands up, a bad sort of exasperation on his face. I move out of his way and he goes out the door, opening it hard enough that it smashes into the side of the RV. Shane follows him – shotgun in hand, of course – and then I'm next. Out into the heat once again. Oh, the heat.

"I said it, didn't I say it? A thousand times . . ." Dale's saying as my shoes touch asphalt, as sunlight touches my cheeks. He goes to the RV's front, we all do – Andrea and T-Dog and Glenn have followed us first three out – and the greyish smoke floats up into the air like I saw it do once before, and I don't like that memory so I shove it back down and listen as Dale grumbles, "Dead in the water," and that distracts me, but not in a good way, because it just makes me think that if it meant we could be in the water I would have killed the stupid RV myself. My throat's _so_ dry . . . and my head hurts, now that I think about it . . . Mom always used to tell me to drink water when I got a headache, because it was probably something called _dehydration_ –

"Problem, Dale?" Shane's asking pleasantly, surveying the area. I wiggle my head a little, bringing myself back to here and now, and I watch my dad, who's left the motorcycle a little ways off and is coming over to us now.

Dale answers, "Oh, just a small matter of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no hope of – " Then he looks around, at all of the cars, all with car _parts_ open for the taking, and I think he was about to say with no hope in fixing the RV, but now he says, "Okay, that was dumb" and in spite of myself my lips twitch a little. I like Dale.

"If you can't find a radiator hose here . . ." Shane says.

"Whole buncha stuff we can find." My dad's at an ugly yellowish car right in front of us. That car's got a weird kind of back and the window of it is open, and my dad's rifling through the inside now.

"Siphon more fuel from these cars, for a start." T-Dog.

I want to go to my dad but decide not to. Don't want to get in his way or nothing.

"_Anything," Sydney, _Mom would correct._ And remind me to yell at your daddy later. Good and grammatically. _

I kick the ground and stick a hand in my pocket, touching the folded-up photo.

"Maybe some water?"

That was Carol, standing just behind Andrea (who's behind me), Sophia under her arm. The others – the two families – have gotten out of the Cherokee and come up to us. When did that happen? I bite the inside of my cheek, as punishment more than anything, because I've got to start paying closer attention or it's gonna be the death of me, and that's not just an expression anymore. But then somebody says something about food, and that sets my mouth off watering – had a handful of _garbanzo_ beans last night, nothing since – and then Lori's voice breaks into my head with "This is a graveyard."

I go still. I feel the air tense up. Looks are exchanged. _Graveyard_. Graveyard, I hate that word . . . and I think back to the body I saw earlier . . .

I turn and look up at dad, but he's eyeing Lori over my head, and Lori, she says, "I don't know how I feel about this."

Another pause.

Then it's over. Everyone starts moving again, including my dad, he starts going through the back of that car again. I relax, because that means it's okay that we're here. It means any food and clothes and _water _we find is ours if we want it, and that gets me excited. T-Dog goes off to get what he needs to suck – _siphon_ – out fuel, and Shane calls for us all to look around, gather what we can. I hesitate but then start towards my dad, figuring if I'm helping I can't get in his way too bad.

"Sydney?"

Behind me. Carl's standing there, Sophia next to him, and she's holding that doll, of course. Their moms are close by, edging towards a green car, but Carl's eyes are on me and he asks, "Wanna walk around with us?"

I resist the urge to bite my knuckle. He's just being nice, I know. We're not friends. Carl doesn't really want me there, and I've barely ever spoken with Sophia, but I'm sure she doesn't like me because Carl doesn't like me. Point is, I shouldn't –

"Little Bit."

I look over my shoulder. Dad's done looking through that first car, I think, and T-Dog's by him, passing over one of those big red jugs they carry the fuel in. My dad says, "You can go with them if ya want, but you keep to where I can see ya."

"'Kay."

And now what can I do? My dad just gave me permission to go with Carl and Sophia _in front of Carl and Sophia. _I can't just say no for the hell of it, can I? Even if they don't really want me to come – and I know they don't – that'd make them feel bad, I think. So, I do the good thing. I swallow a sigh and muster up a weak smile – at least, I think it's a smile – for Sophia and for Carl. _Carl_. The person I feel more awkward around than anyone else.

Because Carl, he caught me crying two nights ago. Alone on some stairs after I had a fight with my dad. A fight that sort of had a little to do with Carl, actually, but I won't get into that. No. Gotta just leave all of that behind me. Forget the CDC. All of it.

And so I go with them. And really, it's not bad, because we don't talk much. Sophia and Carl and I just follow their moms, and I keep my dad in sight, and we look around. We just . . . look. Explore. I used to like exploring, but it's different now. It's different _here_. Because Lori was right – this is a graveyard. We go through the cars, and sometimes we see bodies, or smell them, or both, and I keep my face calm, but every time a new body appears, and I hear that familiar sound of buzzing flies, something inside of my belly twitches around and makes me feel a little queasy and I have to turn and check for my dad. But, like I said. Straight face. I don't scare easy.

Before long, I come across a little white car that reminds me of my Nana's. It's empty, and its passenger door is open. The other kids and Lori and Carol are at a black sports car two cars down, so I'm sort of alone. After a second I slide into the white car. The seats are hot. My Nana's car smelled like her perfume, but I don't smell anything in here but what I smelled outside – meaning mainly rot and hot asphalt. I find myself digging through the console – and I know I'm supposed to be looking through luggage, for useful stuff like clothes, but a few lost seconds won't hurt, and my Nana used to always keep granola bars in the console – and that's when someone comes up to the open door. "So, why's your dad call you 'Little Bit?'"

Carl. And _wha_t? I give him a half-a-second look and then return to the console, which doesn't seem to have any food but holds some coins and a tiny notebook and pepper spray and lip balm and lots and lots of pens. I pull out a silvery one and tell Carl, "Don't know. He and my unc . . . My dad's done it since I was a baby. Just a nickname."

"My dad doesn't call me anything like that."

He doesn't want to get me started on his dad, not when I'm not completely sure yet if I even like Rick. He's still the man who left Merle. So I stay silent and click the pen a few times before drawing on my hand. It takes a few scribbles, but the ink starts to come out, and it stains a squiggly line on my skin. I pretend it's a tattoo. I've always wanted a tattoo, like my dad, he has tattoos. He used to say he'd take me to get my own the day my mom okayed it, and I asked and asked but of course Mom said no.

It takes a few seconds for Carl to get that I'm not going to answer him (I'm honestly not trying to be mean, there's no sense in that, but how am I supposed to answer?), and he says, "Your dad seems really cool, though."

"Mmhmm." He's not even looking around, Carl. He should be, we're supposed to be, right? I spot something extra shiny at the bottom of the console, and I dump the pen on the floor and reach my hand back into this could-be treasure box.

"What about your mom? Bet she was cool, too."

I shove my hand down, wrap my fingers around something soft and crinkly, and come up with a miniature Snickers bar. "You never had any friends with dead parents, did you?"

I don't really think about that before I say it. I don't think about the effect it will have on either of us, Carl or me, but what it does is drop a weight into my chest and make Carl's mouth open and his eyes get this confused, sorry look that reminds me of both my friend Tyler and my dog Buck and so that makes me feel bad on top of the weight. So I clear my throat and open up my candy bar, and as I do, I say, "I mean . . . just, I don't like talking about my mom. That's all."

"I'm sorry," Carl says, and normally I hate it when people say that to me, but Carl says it differently than most. He says it like it's real. Not like he's a dog begging you not to kick it. I got to admit, I like that. But I just give him a nod and then break off half of the Snickers bar.

"Here."

He takes the candy. And he smiles. He _smiles_, and this is so different from the last conversation we had when the RV stranded us –

"Sydney!"

Well, maybe it's not so different after all. Because that's my dad's voice and he doesn't sound happy.

I send a breath out through my teeth and drop my half of the Snickers in the seat before I jump out of the car. My dad's across the highway, looking down the road. I put my hands on top of the car – it's _hot _up here– and stand on my tiptoes. "Yeah, Dad?"

His head turns to me, and even from here I can see his face get hard. He moves closer, one of those fuel jugs in his hand. "What'd I say 'bout stayin' where I can see you?"

"I's just sittin' in the car."

"Well, don't. And don't make me tell you again, neither."

I nod. He walks off, and I give Carl a sideways look, and even though I just sort of got into trouble, I can't help it, a smile somehow curls around my lips. "He still seem really cool?"

And guess what?

Carl laughs, his mouth full of chocolate. I actually _make him laugh_.

And me, I giggle a little, too, and in that second, Carl and I? We could maybe be something like friends.

. . . . .

"Anything good?" asks Sophia a few minutes later as I peer into the bed of some truck, my feet on the bumper.

I scan. Some torn-apart luggage and its torn-apart contents. "Probably not," I say to her and Carl. "But maybe –"

"Lori! Under the cars!"

My head jerks around and I find Rick, rifle in his hands and that hat on his head, and then my eyes move to Lori, to the left of the truck and ducking beside a huge black van, and then I finally look behind me, past the RV and so many cars, and – and they're coming.

_Them._

And there are a lot.

. . . . .

**A.N.: Do you guys like Sydney's interactions with the other characters? Just a few so far, I know, but I'd love to hear some feedback about that. Thanks for reading.**


	3. Instinct

Walkers. Lots and lots of them, more than I've ever seen together before. More even than that night of the fish fry when – oh, and I don't even have a knife –

"Kids, _get down now!_" Rick hisses.

That snaps me back into the moment. I get down, or I _jump_ down, I jump down from the bed, losing my balance a bit, my eyes glued to the bobbing heads I can still see even from down here. Rick's gotten on the ground by a vehicle, he's going under it, and Sophia's moving under a different one, a closer one, and she's making high-pitched squeaks, and a hand – Carl's hand – wraps around my wrist and pulls at me but I pull away. I pull away.

Because everything I got is telling me to go find my dad. My dad. I have to – I have to find my dad, I_ have to – _

Someone whisper-yells my name, maybe Rick, maybe Carl, maybe both, when I run, but I'm gone like lightning and they're in my dust, them and all the walkers. Yes, I run from the walkers and to my dad, my dad, I want my dad –

_But where the hell is he?_

It goes like this: I dart from car to car, ducking behind the front of one here, the open door of another over there, making my way deeper into the car lake, all alone, keeping my head low. I trip over things and kick them out of my way, my teeth clamped together and my fingernails digging into my palms.

I'd been keeping my dad in sight, I told him I would stay where he could see me, and I_ had_, after the white car, so where is he, how could he disappear that fast, where . . . ?

Before long, I stop by a station wagon, I have to, I have to take a quick, _very quick_ breather. Too much panic, too fast running. I'm resting on the side of the wagon opposite of the walkers, naturally. I'm brave and so I glance around the station wagon, and I get a stab in my gut that hurts all the way to my toes at what I see. The walkers are catching up – a few at the front, I can see their chests. They move faster than I thought, and like a car wreck I have to watch them for a second, stumbling around the vehicles, finding every space to go through, like water in a creek. Oh, and I can _hear them. _I pull my head back, and as I lean against the wagon and gasp in air, searching ahead of me, searching the dead traffic jam – one more dumb dead thing – and as I'm trying to make myself _think_, those walkers' growls and raspy lungs invade my ears and mind and heart and a dry, tiny whine that I hate escapes my throat.

Gotta be tough. Gotta be tough, and I gotta think fast. My dad, my dad'll have seen the walkers, of course, I'm an idiot for running in the first place, my dad can take care of himself, and I'm not a baby, I should be able to take care of _myself_, but the best way to do that would have been to stay with the others, right? Power in numbers? Now I'm out here alone . . . no knife . . . I have to hide . . . under the cars, like Rick said? No, wait – wouldn't the walkers smell me? Oh, God, if that's how it is, Carl and Sophia and the others, are they –

Can't think about that. Gotta think about me. Gotta go. Gotta survive. They're coming. I hear them. Gotta –

Just as my muscles are tensing I see something move out of the corner of my eye, over to my left, and I drop myself down, almost falling, my heart about to rip itself from my chest. But, no, it's not a walker. It's T-Dog. It's T-Dog, about ten feet away, and his nice striped shirt is covered in blood. I watch with big eyes as he stumbles out of sight, behind a huge blue truck . . .

And I don't think about it, really. I just dive to the ground and scramble to him, because he's a grownup, and even if he's hurt, he's gotta know what to do. I'm smart, but I'm just a kid. Grownups, grownups know what to do . . .

I pull myself underneath the blue truck and crawl, scraping my bare elbows as I do, and I come up on the other side, and I see him, he's lying down, and oh, God. That's a lot of blood. That's a lot of blood on that nice striped shirt, and I can tell right away from the shocked, almost frozen face of T-Dog that he is in no position to know what to do, and I'm back where I was five seconds ago only now I have a bloody man with me.

He's found himself – and now I have, too – in this little section blocked off by three cars, one of them on its side and showing all of the mechanical stuff underneath it, but that one's to my right, and T-Dog's in front of me, up against the tire of this dark-colored car. And he's not alone, he's not alone, there are bodies lying around here, I think four, but I don't stop to count, I just pretend the corpses aren't there and – still on all fours – I go to T-Dog and touch his shoulder, and through all the shock on his face I see fear, serious fear . . . It's his arm, his right arm is sliced open, and how did it happen? It's deep, and – _blood _– can't walkers smell blood?

"Sydney," T-Dog chokes, and I look up at him, but he's looking behind me, and I hear it before I even turn.

The shuffling. The moaning. Like how that scary Grim Reaper would sound –

I whip my head around and there's one coming for us, right into this little area, and it used to be a man and it's wearing torn-up overalls and it's _coming to kill us._

My dad says people have instincts, just like animals do. The same thing that makes a doe take care of her fawn or tells a squirrel to hide acorns causes people to do things without thinking about it, things that help them survive. Instinct. _Instinct_ is what's happening to me now, as my body shrinks back against T-Dog like he's a magnet and I'm metal. _Instinct_ is why my hand decides to go for my knife – but I don't have it, it's blown to bits miles away, so now _instinct_ makes me check T-Dog for a weapon, some weapon. I don't see one, so _instinct_ moves my eyes around, but there's nothing in arm's reach that's sharp enough. And _instinct_ – I'm not proud of this – _instinct_ says to run, bolt, flee, leave, but there's nowhere to go. I'm cornered.

And instinct, instinct has now done all it can, and instinct leaves me behind and the only choice I have is to die.

The walker's steps away. His eyes – his frozen, cold, _wrong_ eyes – they're on T-Dog's arm, focused in like lasers, but I know he'll tear into me just as fast, and others will swarm around, and me, I'm gonna get ripped apart or turned into _one of them _– just like Dr. Jenner warned would happen – an _agonizing death_, he said -

There's a blur from behind the walker, and something clattering onto the hood of the car in front of us – a crossbow.

Now the geek's got an arm around its neck, and the geek is twitching, it's twitching and spitting blood and choking, and of course the arm belongs to my dad.

Dad and the walker topple to the ground and the walker stops moving, stops doing anything, and with an angry grunt my dad pulls his knife from the back of the thing's head. His face is even dirtier than it was when I saw him last, but it's not like I care, he's the best thing I've ever seen, my dad. I'm breathing hard, my mouth feels like cotton, and I want to just jump to Dad and hug him with everything I got and let him promise me that things are okay, but of course now's not the time and so I only give him a little nod to tell him I'm alright. Dad's eyes go to T-Dog, take in the cut, all the blood, and then those blue eyes – hunter's eyes, like mine – they come back to me. Dad presses a finger to his lips. _"Shh."_

He's said that to me a million times before but it's so much different now. We're not hunting, we're . . . we're being hunted? No, walkers don't hunt, that takes too much skill, walkers just find something on accident and then rip it apart –

I press my fingers into the dirty asphalt to try and stop myself from shaking. But the sounds of the walkers are loud, they're right on top of us, they'll be here any second, ripping –

My dad's standing, he's grabbing T-Dog's legs, and Dad's here, it's okay, it's okay. I cringe as he drags T-Dog across the ground, though, because T-Dog makes these muffled whimpering sounds that have to mean it hurts him, but I cringe even more when my dad stops and hauls the walker he just killed on top of T-Dog. Then Dad moves over beside me, crouching low, and I stand but crouch low, too. Dad grips the open door of the car I'm against and pushes it open wider. There's a body inside, half-decayed and horrible, and I take a little step back. "Sydney, lie down," Dad mutters. His hands go for the corpse.

I look from him to the body and over to T-Dog under the dead walker, and things click, and I can't help it, I say, "Dad, _no – "_

And he snaps his fingers and points at the ground, and the expression on his face tells me he's not asking, and so I lower myself down, I have to, and my eyes go back to the unmoving form of T-Dog again, and to the thing on top of him, and then there's this awful crunching sound and my dad's on the ground beside me and there's a body on top of us, a terrible, rotting dead body, and even though most of it is on my dad it still feels really heavy on me and it _smells horrible_. I turn my head and gag and then somehow a whimper slips up from my throat, like the whine did before, and my dad's arm snakes under my back and he clamps a hand over my mouth. "_Hush,_" he breathes sharply, his head against mine.

And then the walkers are here, barely a second after we're under the dead man.

They move right over us, shambling past, bumping into the cars and the corpses and coming close enough to touch, and I've never been this close to one of them. The sounds they make, the snarling . . . They sound like animals. Really vicious animals, and I guess maybe that's all they are. I shut my eyes. I don't want to see them. Ever again. My dad's perfectly still beside me, his hand still over my mouth. The corpse on us makes me understand the term _dead weight_ and I start holding my breath to be quiet and so I won't have to smell it.

It feels like we stay like that a really long time – my lungs start to burn – but I guess it can't be longer than a minute or so. It's long enough, though, plenty long enough. The walkers eventually fade out, stop crossing by us, move on to wherever, wherever walkers move on to. The moans, the dragging steps, the crackling in-and-out of the air they don't need, all of that fades away, but my dad keeps us on the ground even for a while after I can't hear a thing, and I know he's just keeping us safe, but a bad part of me wants to be mad at him.

Then, finally, just when my lungs are about to explode, Dad heaves the body off of us and I feel relief like I never have before. The corpse lands on the other side of me with a crumpling sound. I scramble away from it, coughing and gulping in air, and I back into my dad, who yanks me around to face him. "You okay? _Sydney! _You okay?"

And I swallow and say, "Yeah," and that's enough for him, I guess, because he turns away and moves over to T-Dog, shoving the body off of him. I see him move, T-Dog, and as Dad helps him sit up he makes gurgling noises. He's still alive. But those gurgling noises aren't good, and all that blood, and I don't know –

I focus on making myself stand. My legs wobble. My breath's uneven, and I hate that, and I feel really sick to my stomach and T-Dog's still gurgling. I glance at the corpse my dad put on us but then look away from it. My mind goes back to the CDC, to Dr. Jenner, to Jacqui, to a clock-ticking down and an offer –

No! _N_o_, _damn it – no, _goddamn _it, and that's one of the words that my mom would be mad at me for using, but my mom's _dead_, and I'm alive, and she wanted me to be alive, and I've got to want it, too . . . And I told my dad that I did. . .

I look at him, my dad, struggling to get T-Dog on his feet, and I feel a dripping sort of misery inside of me, and in my head I tell him I'm sorry, and I promise I won't think about it again, I'll forget the CDC, I'll forget all of it.

Dad's just got T-Dog to a very unsteady stand when there's a scream. A small, little scream, like from just a kid, a girl, and I look towards that scream and all I can think is _Sophia._


	4. Waiting

Sophia ran off into the woods on the side of the highway after two walkers started in on her. Apparently she tried to get out from under her hiding car too soon and they spotted her and started chasing her. Rick followed them all into the woods. This is what my dad and T-Dog and I are told when we reach the RV a few minutes after we hear the scream.

Then it's waiting.

We all hang around by the guardrail for a long, long time. Even T-Dog, after Dale patches him up. My dad stands on the hood of a car, keeping watch, and Shane stands on the top of another. Glenn leans on a different car altogether. Dale and T-Dog are by the guardrail, Dale watching off of it (for Rick and Sophia and walkers) and T-Dog just resting there. Andrea is by the car my dad is on. Carl and I are by the car Shane is on. Lori is sitting on the hood of that same car, and she is rubbing the back of Carol, who switches between standing and leaning, crying and not. With or without tears, her face makes me hurt and so I don't look at her much at all. I keep my eyes on my feet, mostly.

I hate waiting.

. . . . .

Rick comes back and he doesn't have Sophia.

_He doesn't have Sophia._

He left her. He found her and then he left her in a nook on the river, that's what he says. He told her to run back here when she got the chance, he told her how to get here and everything. But has he ever _met _Sophia? The twelve-year-old who still carries a doll? The girl who once begged me not to kill a rabbit because it wasn't hurting anybody? How would she know what to do in the woods? How would she know how to get away from walkers? Did she even have a weapon? Anything?

_He left her._

And when Carol hears this she falls on her knees and I get angry and I _definitely _don't like Rick but I have to keep it all inside and I hate that.

My dad goes back into the woods with him, with Rick. Shane and Glenn go, too, but my dad's the best one to take, the most useful, and it makes me calm down a little that he goes. I mean, I hate that he's not here. Hate it. But he's a great tracker, the best, it runs in the family, and he'll find Sophia. He'll find her, and she'll be fine.

There's waiting again.

An hour after they leave, Shane and Glenn come back. My dad and Rick are still out there, still looking. Shane tells us my dad picked up the trail. Of course he did. He'll find Sophia easy, if she's still –

Stop. That's a bad thought.

And then there's waiting.

. . . . .

Dale and I stand by the front of the RV and watch – well, Dale sort of directs – as Shane drives this old tan car into a big red one. Andrea stands outside of the red car but jogs with it when it starts to move, her hand on its steering wheel, and she makes it roll safely off the highway, down a small slope and into another car.

As Shane backs the tan car away, Dale turns to the RV again. He's working on fixing it. He's got some little door open and I can see inside of the RV. The bolts and screws and pipey-things are old and rusty and I think it's time for a new RV, but I guess that's not really an option. "Can you fix it?"

Dale's fingers reach into the opening, touch something, fiddle around. "Oh, sure. It'll just take a little time, is all."

"You a mechanic?"

Jim was a mechanic.

Dale shakes his head. "No, no, but this thing has been giving out on me for years . . ." he looks down at me, smiling. It makes me relax a bit, that smile. Dale reminds me of my Papaw, have I mentioned that? "I remember one time, my wife and I were taking a trip to Nevada, and right in the middle of the Interstate –"

"Why aren't we all out there lookin'? Why're we movin' cars?"

Dale stops and looks above me and I look over my shoulder. Carol's come over here. She's hugging herself and talking to Dale.

"Well, we have to clear enough room so I can get the RV turned around as soon as it's running," Dale explains. "Now that we have fuel we can double back to a bypass that Glenn flagged on the map."

"Goin' back's gonna be easier than trying to get through this mess." That's Shane. He and his shotgun have appeared behind Carol. Almost at the same time, Lori and Carl arrive at the RV, both with their hands full of newfound supplies. I catch Carl's eye and remember the Snickers from earlier. I suddenly wish we'd given some to Sophia.

Carol's forehead's wrinkling up. "We're not going anywhere till my daughter gets back," her wobbly voice says.

"Hey." Lori leaves her findings in a little pile we've started and comes over to Carol, touches her arm. "That goes without saying."

"Look, Rick and Daryl – they're on it, okay?" Shane tells Carol, gently. "Just a matter of time."

"Can't be soon enough for me." Andrea. She and Glenn have reappeared from somewhere in the car lake, and Andrea has a water bottle. I already got some earlier – it was like going swimming on the hottest day of the year, but in my throat and head – and I kind of want more now. But instead of seeking out water, my eyes follow Carol as she turns her back to the rest of us and goes back to her spot by the guardrail. I think it's the spot Sophia ran from. Andrea and Shane say something about a herd but I don't really listen. Watching Carol stand all alone like that makes me want to gnaw my knuckle. Doesn't she know? Doesn't she understand that this is _my dad _we're talking about?

My feet move before my mind gives them the okay, and then I'm sort of trapped in doing it. I leave the others and their discussion of herds and attacks and go over to Carol. It's quieter over here. I stand beside her and look out into the woods. There's a hill covered in brush that leads down to where the forest starts. The forest, it's thick and shadowy on the inside. The best kind, if you ask me.

Carol's hands are together, her fingers twisting around one another, pulling and releasing. I know this . . . Yeah, it's called _wringing. _Wringing your hands. Mom made fun of Nana for doing it. Nana did it a lot, actually, when she was nervous. And Carol, Carol's definitely nervous. Definitely scared.

I look up at her. I don't talk to her much, but now's as good a time as any. Maybe. "No point in worryin'."

She glances at me. I don't think she realized I was here. Her gaze moves back up, back to the dark woods, just as fast. "Well, sometimes you can't help it."

"I know," I say. God, I'm not good with words. Mom, Mom was. "But I just mean, my dad . . ." And how do I describe it? How do I make her get it? I'm not sure you _can_ get it, not unless you see him in action, my dad. "He's a really good tracker," I settle on, which is weak. "I mean, the best. Maybe ever." Well, him or Merle, anyway. And someday I'll give them both a run for their money, but that's not important right now, and I keep my eyes on Carol, because Mom always said eye contact is important for making people believe you. "Sophia's gonna be just fine."

And I believe it, I do.

And Carol, Carol manages to give me a smile, and it's hard for her to do, I can tell, but at least it's a smile. And at least I tried. She can believe me or not. Either way, my dad'll bring back Sophia and Carol will see for herself.

I've done what I can. I walk away.

. . . . .

"Look."

Carl says this to me from his perch on the edge of a dusty red truck, a place that gives him a view through a dirty window into the cab. I step back from the on-its-side blue motorcycle I'm examining and go over to him. He jumps down and I jump up and I look.

Another body. Great.

I don't flinch. I look down at Carl, who's standing on his tiptoes below me, still peering in. "What about it?"

"Under its arm. You see it?" His voice is excited.

I look again, my eyes avoiding the decaying head, the wide-open mouth with the crazy teeth, and I do see it. Under the arm, like Carl said. Something flat and black, but with a silver line on its edge, its curved-out edge.

I squint. "What is that, an axe? Or . . . a hatchet?"

"Only one way to find out." He heads around the truck, walking with a purpose. I watch him for a moment, taken aback, before dropping down and following him.

"You kiddin' me? You ever even touched a body before?"

We reach the other side of the truck, the driver's side, and Carl pauses, eyes on the window, on the outline of the dead man's dead head. He looks uncertain for a second, but then he says to me, "If that's a hatchet, we need it."

"We got other weapons."

His eyes meet mine, and I know right away I hate that look. "What, are you scared?" he asks, and in spite of everything, in spite of the corpse and Sophia and all, the corners of his mouth are almost curling up, I can see it, and I narrow my eyes. Scared? He thinks _I'm _scared?

"I had one of those –" I check behind me, and there are no adults close, the only ones I see are Dale and Glenn by the RV and Carol by the guardrail, and so I turn back around. "I had one of those _damn _things on top of me a few hours ago, city boy," I snarl at him in a low voice, ignoring the fact that most of my time before the walkers was spent with my mom and we lived in a nice neighborhood where people mowed their lawns and had swimming pools in their backyards. That's not me these days. "I ain't scared of one more."

Carl's head tilts from me to the body and back. There's a question in his expression. A request. I raise my eyebrows. That changed around fast. "What, you want _me_ to do it?"

"You just said you're not scared."

"And what, you are?" I cross my arms. "Need me to do your dirty work?"

We stare at each other for a while.

Finally, Carl sighs. He gestures at the handle. "Alright . . . Why don't we do it together? On three?"

I could do it alone. I could do it alone just fine. But, I mean, Carl's the one who wants the hatchet-axe thing so bad. And if he doesn't want to get it by himself, it's only nice that I help him. So I nod.

"One . . ." he begins. "Two . . ."

Both of our hands find the handle. Our fingers tighten around it, carefully, not enough to pull it, not yet. We watch each other.

"Three!"

The handle resists but gives. The door squeaks as it swings open. The body's arm slips from its lap and dangles from the torso while Carl and I stand there, taking the image and the stench of the dead man in. My body wants to shiver and I tell it hell no. If I handled hiding under a corpse, I can absolutely handle this. Even if my dad's not here.

The hatchet – and it is a hatchet, I'm sure now – the hatchet is right there. Well, sort of. It's under the arm not dangling, the arm farthest from us.

Carl and I don't say anything for a bit. He breathes out through an O-shaped mouth.

"You wanted it," I eventually say, because isn't it true?

"I thought you weren't scared?"

See? This is why he and I are not friends. Not really. "I thought you weren't, either? I already helped you open the door." I nod at the hatchet, at the body. "You want it, you get it."

He grimaces. I wait. He doesn't move for a minute, but then he does. One minute he's still, the next he's pressing up against the dead man's car seat, and I gotta admit, I'm surprised.

Carl reaches his arm across the corpse's lap, touching onto the hatchet. Then his other hand goes up to help. I check for adults, but we're still pretty alone. "It's not just a hatchet," Carl tells me, his voice strained by the pulling. "It's a whole bundle."

"Of what? Weapons?"

He yanks and yanks but this bundle of his doesn't come out. He lets go and steps back. I bite my lip, look at the body, and then say, "Let me try," because if it's a whole bundle of weapons, I know it's worth getting, and it's not a big deal, it's just a body . . .

But by the time I've made my offer, Carl's climbing up beside the seat. Now I'm _really_ surprised.

And . . . just a little impressed.

"Ew." He bends over the corpse. "It smells so bad."

He has no idea. I don't tell him this, though, because like I said, the kid's showing more spine than I've ever given him credit for, and I don't want to spoil that.

Carl grabs the bundle and tugs, tugs, tugs.

"Why won't it come out?" I ask.

"It's just hooked – _whoa!_"

He tumbles out, his sentence ended with his own high-pitched yell and a cracking noise from the corpse, and as Carl hits asphalt and I squat down to him, the body leans out over us, kept from falling out only by the seat belt it's still trapped under.

"You okay?" I ask as Carl sits up, panting. He has the bundle in his hands, this black leather thing about half his height. He nods at me and feels the bundle. A grin breaks out over his face. "It's an _arsenal_."

. . . . .

Carl and I show the weapons to Shane and he tells us – kind of harshly, actually, but I don't know why – to give them to Dale, so we do. My dad and Rick still aren't back yet, and I'm not worried, but I just wish they would hurry up and bring Sophia back.

We keep looking around – scavenging, Glenn calls it once. Yeah, we scavenge. Lori, she finds some clothes she thinks will fit me – four shirts, two pairs of jeans, a pair of shorts, some socks and underwear, and everything seems clean. I immediately change, since I swear I can smell death on my old clothes. The jeans I choose from my new stash are a little long, but that can be fixed by just rolling them up, and the shirt is a green tank top that's kind of loose but looks like something my mother would wear on a weekend, so I like it.

Before I leave the RV's bathroom I dig out my mom's picture from my old jeans. I tuck all of my clothes under one of the beds in the back room and then go outside, head straight to my uncle's – my dad's? – motorcycle, where I tuck the picture into one of the bags on the side of it. I hate not having the photo on me, but it's too easy to lose and I can't risk it. That would be awful.

The sun sinks. The day gets dim. My dad and Rick don't get back, and I can't help thinking about the day of the fish fry, when my dad and Rick and Glenn and T-Dog went into the city to find Merle and some guns Rick had accidentally left behind. I waited for them to get back all day, long after they were supposed to have returned, and then it got dark and late and they showed up just as walkers were killing half of our people . . .

That won't happen this time. They'll get back, and they'll have Sophia, and things will be good. Things will be fine.

Less and less light. The sky in the west turns orange, the sky in the east goes blue. My stomach hurts. No reason, though, no reason at all. I've even eaten some jerky Shane passed around earlier, so I'm not even hungry. And nervous? No reason to be nervous. My dad, my dad can take care of himself. And Rick. And Sophia.

I keep busy. Like I said earlier, we're pooling supplies together, and I set myself to organizing out the food we find. Cans over here, dried fruits over there, that kind of thing. I even start sorting by expiration date after a while. At one point, Shane comes up behind me with a huge jug of water and he gives me a smile. "That's good, Sydney," he says. He's not harsh, like before. I like Shane.

Dale and Andrea start arguing behind me – Dale has Andrea's gun, I think, and he won't give it back? – and Shane goes over to break that up, says something about not having so many guns "floating around camp," and I'm in the middle of thinking that my dad ain't gonna give up his gun no matter how Shane feels about it when I hear Glenn say, "Oh, God – they're back."

I drop a jar of peanut butter and bolt to the guardrail. Glenn's right. They're coming up the hill right now, Rick in his dirty white shirt and my dad with his crossbow and –

And that's it.

No Sophia.

I stop short just behind Carol. What? _What? _But my dad – my _dad_ –

A strange breathy sound that's sort of like a sigh but different comes from Carol, and then, when my dad and Rick get close enough, "You didn't find her?"

Rick climbs over the guardrail. "Her trail went cold. We'll pick it up again at first light."

I hear others gathering behind me but I don't turn. I look at my dad, who's not looking at me, and I don't understand. Has my dad ever lost a trail before? Ever?

_Sophia_.

"You can't leave my daughter out there on her own, to spend the night alone in the woods . . ." Carol's close to crying again. Again. But she has a right to cry, I know . . .

"Out in the dark's no good," my dad tells her, and he's using his special gentle voice, and for a moment – just one moment – I feel a spike of jealousy because that's supposed to be his voice for _me_, that's why it's _special_. But then I feel ashamed. "We'd just be tripping over ourselves. More people'd get lost –"

"But she's twelve! She can't be out there on her own!"

Being twelve has nothing to do with it. Being a girl like Sophia does. I feel sick.

Carol faces Rick, her face changing, crumpling together, and sobs are seconds away. "You didn't find _anything_?"

"I know this is hard," Rick says, holding his hands up in a _calm down_ sort of way, "But I'm asking you not to panic. We know she was out there."

"And we tracked her for a while," Dad adds.

Carol's breathing hard, shakily. All of her is shaking, actually.

"We have to make this an organized effort," says Rick, loudly, and I look behind me and all of the group is here. Lori's doing her best to comfort Carl. Carl's mouth is open. The look on his face . . . I don't think he ever considered that they wouldn't find Sophia.

But then again, neither did I . . .

Roll with the punches. Roll with the punches. Be tough. What's Rick saying?

"Daryl knows the woods better than anybody."

True. Very true.

"I've asked him to oversee this."

"Is – is that blood?" Carol's asking. She's pointing at my dad's leg. And yes, there's blood. Why is there blood on my dad's leg?

Rick and Dad exchange looks, and Rick seems lost for a moment, but then he nods. "We took down a walker."

"A walker – oh my God –"

"There was no sign it was ever anywhere near Sophia."

I want to get away from all of these people and go somewhere with my dad and talk to him. I want his hand on my shoulder and I want him to tell me I'm fine and –

Andrea's asking Rick how he can be sure, be sure that the walker wasn't around Sophia, that the walker didn't –

But it's my dad who answers. "We cut the son'bitch open. Made sure."

I think of all of the deer, the rabbits, the squirrels I've seen my dad gut. _Helped _him gut. Now I try to take all those scenes, all the blood and the gore, and make a human – no, a _walker_, there's a big difference – fit into the picture. I can't. I don't want to. I don't look at the blood on my dad's leg anymore.

Carol. Poor Carol. She sits down on the guardrail. She's pale, I can tell that even in the dusky light. I hate this. My dad's still behind the guardrail. I want him by me, now.

Lori's sitting beside Carol. Carol, she's talking to Rick. Oh, she's – she's mad. "How could you just leave her out there to begin with? How could you just leave her?"

Handcuffs flash through my mind and it happens – my temper flares up and I'm mad again, just like that, it flares up and makes my fists form, and I glare at Rick and will Carol on.

"Those two walkers were on us," says Rick. He sounds tired. Anxious. I don't care. "I had to draw them off. It was her best chance."

Shane passes me and stands beside Rick. "Sounds like he didn't have a choice, Carol."

"How was she supposed to find her way back on her own?" Carol gasps.

Look at the sun. Remember landmarks. Trace your footsteps. But Sophia, she doesn't know that, any of that, but I guess that didn't matter to Rick.

"She's just a child . . . _she's just a child _. . ."

Rick crouches beside her, wiping a hand over his mouth. "It – it was my only option. The only choice I could make," he tells Carol, and he sounds earnest. Real. Regretful . . .

But he left her and that was _wrong_, it was _wrong!_

Shane tells him nobody doubts him. Shane is wrong, too. You don't leave people. You don't –

I was going to leave T-Dog. Earlier today. Instinct told me to.

My stomach caves in and it hits me that I'm no better than Rick is.

"My little girl got left in the woods." Tears are streaming down Carol's face now.

Rick doesn't reply. Then he bobs his head up and down, fast. Then he stands. He looks around at all of us, and then all at once, he starts walking away, Andrea sits on the other side of Carol, and my dad steps over the guardrail. He moves past me without a word, but his hand lands on my shoulder as he goes by. I want to chase after him so bad, but I know my dad. He wants time alone right now.

I don't look at Carl again for the rest of the night. Because his friend is lost. Because his dad left her and that's bad and I might be just as bad. Because my dad couldn't – he hasn't found Sophia yet. Because Carl and I aren't friends. Because it should have been me and not Sophia, if life were fair, because I would know what to do with myself. Because I hated that look Carl had on his face before and I don't want to see it again.


	5. Compare and Contrast

No time is wasted the next morning. Dad shakes me awake and I roll out of the RV's passenger seat, and fifteen minutes later I'm standing outside, munching on a granola bar. Every grownup is here and ready and – thanks to the weapons Carl and me found – armed in some way. My dad's going to lead them up the creek a ways (I think he said five miles?) then bring them back down on the creek's other side. Combing, that's the word for it, the word for searching really hard for something. At first I think it's just the grownups going and that's the end of it, but then I overhear Carl's parents saying _he_ can come, and so of course I have to ask my dad if I can go, because Carl going and me not going? No way.

I find him standing by the bed of a blue Dodge, messing with his crossbow. "Dad?" I say, jumping up onto the truck's bumper and hooking my hands onto the folded-up tailgate. "Can I go with y'all today? Carl's goin'," I add quickly.

Dad eyes Carl then me. "If Carl jumped off a bridge . . ."

"Dad," I say, trying not to roll my eyes, ending up just tilting my head to the side like Mom would do when my dad said something she thought was silly. "I know the woods better'n him. And I wanna help. And you don't want my trackin' skills to get rusty," I point out, thinking of that at the last minute.

"Lawyer's daughter . . ." Dad mutters, looking off into the distance with his lips tight. I wait, tapping my fingers, until he finally turns his attention back to me and gives me a single nod. "Alright. But you stay close to me."

I start to smile, but then remember this isn't a happy kind of hunt, and so I just promise him that I'll keep close.

"I'm doing this for you."

That's not my dad or me. That's Dale. I crane – that's a good word, _crane_ – I crane my head over to the RV, where Dale is standing, his back to me and Dad and everyone. He's facing Andrea. Andrea's face I can see. She was mad earlier because Shane doesn't want anyone but him and Dad and Rick to have guns when they – we – go out today, and she still looks mad, and I hear the mad in her voice as she says, "No, Dale, you're doing this for you. You need to stop. What do you think's gonna happen? I'm gonna stick it in my mouth and pull the trigger the moment you hand it to me?"

Back at the CDC, Dr. Jenner showed us an image of someone's brain. This someone had been bitten and we watched the playback of the brain being overtaken by blackness and shutting down, then coming back to life – just a little, just enough – and then we watched a bullet go through the brain and make everything go black again. I didn't like watching that, but I'm watching it again now, in my head. And then for a split second I'm seeing my mother and her pistol and so I grasp at a different thought and now I'm seeing Andrea staying behind in the computer room, and that's not a lot better, and then I'm reliving my dad and I standing beside that closed steel door with his hands on my arms as a clock ticks down somewhere else, and no, no better, and –

Stupid thoughts.

I drop down from the truck's bumper. My shoes make a loud slap against the road and a little pain shoots up through my heels. I don't mind. Real pain, pain in the body, it can help sometimes with the pain inside your heart and head.

"I know you're angry at me. That much is clear," Dale is saying. "But if I hadn't done what I did, you'd be dead now."

. . . . .

_My dad, his head rotates to me and he gives me that strange look from before, only worse. Then he throws the axe down, and it hits the floor so hard that I jump and then take a step back when I see that my dad's coming towards me, but he's fast and before I know it he's stooped down and taken ahold of my arms._

. . . . .

My dad is standing right beside me now. He can hear all of this, too, all of what Dale and Andrea are saying, because they're not exactly keeping it down. I wonder what he's thinking about. I wonder if it's the CDC, if it's the same scene that's playing in my head. And I wonder how he remembers what happened on that day I'm supposed to forget about.

"Jenner gave us an option," says Andrea. "I chose to stay."

"You chose suicide!"

Suicide, suicide. I see that bullet going through the brain, I see my mother packing my bag, I see a man in a ball cap lying against a tree, I see an explosion like a giant campfire –

"So what's that to you? You barely know me!"

"I know Amy's death devastated you!"

. . . . .

_"Your mom's gone, and I'm sorry. Your uncle's gone, hell, _everybody_you and me ever knew 'fore all of this is gone, and baby girl, I'm _sorry_.__"_

. . . . .

"Keep her out of this!"

But isn't that what it's about? Amy being dead? Isn't that why Andrea wanted to die, why she wanted to stay with Dr. Jenner and Jacqui? I wonder if it was just because she missed Amy, or if maybe she thought she could see her again. Maybe Andrea believes in heaven. Like my mom did.

Andrea's saying this is not about Amy, this is about her and Dale. "And if I decided I had nothing left to live for," she says, her voice rising and breaking at the same time, "Who the hell are you to tell me otherwise? To force my hand like that?"

. . . . .

"_Hey. _Hey!_You love me?"_

_That's a stupid question, and my dad ain't stupid. "Y-Yeah . . ."_

. . . . .

And now I shake my head really hard and walk away, I walk away from my dad and the Dodge and the RV and Dale and Andrea and Rick and Carl and everyone and all of that conversation. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to think about it.

I want to forget the CDC. So much.

And it wasn't like that. It _wasn't. _Dad and me – Dale and Andrea – it's different, it's so different. Because I didn't want to die. I swear, I didn't want to die, my dad didn't have to talk me out of anything because I _didn't want to die_ –

I don't go far, just past Carol and a little farther into the lake of cars, just deep enough that I can't hear Andrea and Dale anymore. I find a two-door with an open drivers' side and sit sideways, my feet dangling out. I'll just wait. I'll just wait.

I didn't realize my dad followed me, but I guess I should have expected it. I keep my gaze on my feet as he lowers himself to my eye-level. I was wrong, I _can_ hear Andrea, and I can't make out what she's saying, exactly, but her voice is powerful and weak all at once and I believe that a part of her is broken, broken on the inside, and I know how she feels and I'm sorry.

"We need to talk?" my dad asks, and I love him then, because he's using his special gentle voice and that makes me feel better, it always does, no matter what.

But I shake my head. My dad's my best friend, really. But there are still some things I can't talk to him about. And right now, the CDC is one of them. "I just wanna look for Sophia."

Dad doesn't like that, I can see it. But he nods anyway. I'm grateful.


	6. If It Were Me

For hours we walk through the woods in a line, my dad at the front and me right behind him, everyone else coming after us (except for Dale and T-Dog, who stayed at the RV). Dad doesn't talk to me much, not the way he does when it's just me and him – when he tells me all about tracking and hunting and which plants can be used for what and all of the millions of other things my dad knows – but that's alright. I can still watch him. Watch and learn, watch and learn.

The forest is dense and leafy, the trees and plants tangling up and running together like one giant shrub. The brush is really heavy in some places along the ground, but I don't have trouble walking. I'm good in the woods, have had lots of practice. There are bugs, though, lots of bugs, and I'm extra hot, I guess because we're moving pretty fast. My dad, he expects people to keep up.

How long have we been in the woods when we come across the tent? Two hours? Three? I'm not sure. But it just pops up, this yellow spot in a world of green, and my dad holds out a hand to Rick while lowering down. I lower, too, and so do Rick and the others, all except for Shane, who says, "She could be in there."

"Could be a whole buncha things in there," my dad replies. He starts forward, pressing his whole hand into my shoulder as he does, and I know he means for me to stay put. He lifts his crossbow, walking the way he does when he's close to an animal. To prey. Rick and Shane follow him. I fold my knees under me and watch as the three of them approach the tent. The tent that could hold a whole buncha things, a whole buncha bad things . . .

It isn't very far away from me, the tent, but the trees are thick enough that I can't tell exactly what Dad and Rick and Shane do when they reach it, and I don't like that. But I can still see well enough to know that my dad goes right up to the thing while Rick and Shane hang back, and I _really _don't like that.

Then, "Carol!"

That's Rick, talking in a whisper. Carol's fast little footsteps carry her by me and over to him, and when Lori passes me, too, I figure we're all going and so it's okay to follow the women over to Rick and Shane. And I'm right, the others follow. As Rick leads Carol just a little closer to the tent, I look around the pair and see my dad standing at the tent's entrance, which is zipped up all except for just a tiny piece on the edge, so I can't tell what's in it. I don't know if my dad knows, either, but he's got his best hunting knife out and he's crouched and ready to use it. Why is it him? Why does _he_ have to go in?

"Call out softly," Rick tells Carol, "If she's in there, yours is the first voice she should hear."

So Carol calls her daughter's name, in a voice all soft and loving. Motherly. "Sweetie? Are you in there?"

The tent doesn't move. Nothing happens.

"Sophia, it's Mommy . . . _Sophia_." Carol bends down a little, her voice getting higher. More desperate. "We're all here, baby . . . It's Mommy . . ."

Nothing.

Rick moves forward then, signaling for Carol and the rest of us to stay back. Shane goes, too, and as they near the tent my dad starts unzipping the flap, slowly, slowly, his knife still prepared to strike. Finally, when the zipper's gone far enough, Dad pushes the flap back, and over his head I catch a glimpse of the back of a folding chair with what can only be the top of a head peeking over it. My dad coughs out of nowhere, a quick hack of a cough, and Rick's arm comes up to cover his own mouth. That? That tells me right then what's the state of the person the head belongs to. Nervousness creeps up inside of me, and I touch the knife at my waist, the new one my dad chose for me from the arsenal. But I don't think the nervousness is from fear of danger, it's from fear that the smell is coming from –

But no. She disappeared yesterday. That's not enough time for a body to rot that bad, is it?

My dad's going inside the tent. I put a finger to my teeth.

Shane and Rick are both coughing now. And yes, I can smell it too, not as much as they can, I'm sure, and I've smelled worse, but God, I hate that smell.

Lori comes up beside Carol, puts a hand on her. Carl is next to me. I kind of wish I knew what he was thinking but now's not the time to talk.

"Daryl?" Carol calls. "Daryl?"

I keep my eyes on the flap. A few more seconds pass, and then that flap's shoved back and my dad reappears. "Ain't her."

Carol's body loosens, I can see her droop, but in a good way. Me, I _feel_ myself loosen. Sophia's still out there. She's still alive, of course she is. Carl lets out a breath.

"What's in there?" Andrea asks.

"Some guy," Dad slides his knife back into its sheath. "Did what Jenner said – opted out." He slings his crossbow over his back. "Ain't that what he called it?"

And I frown. I frown, because there's something off about his voice. Something . . . flat? Cool? He didn't look at me when he got out. He hasn't looked at me yet, he didn't look at me while he saying all of that, not straight on. That's . . . That's weird.

Then there's a ringing and I'm not thinking about my dad anymore. It's not a flat, ongoing ring, like a phone or a school bell. It's a ding-dong sort of ring, like . . .

Church bells.

There's a moment when everyone is just listening, looking around like the bell and its church will fall straight from the sky, but then Rick is moving. And we're all moving, like a pack of wolves. "What direction?" asks Shane.

"I think that way," Rick points, his feet still going. "I'm pretty sure."

"Damn, it's hard to tell out here . . ."

"If we hear them," says Carol, "Maybe Sophia does, too!"

Maybe someone is calling others, thinks Glenn. Or signaling they've found Sophia, thinks Andrea. Sophia could be ringing them herself, thinks Rick. These people talk too much, that's what I think, only I keep that to myself. I listen hard and it seems Rick's got the direction right, and my dad's letting him lead, so even after the bells stop I follow Rick without protest through thinner and thinner woods, until we reach a clearing. In the middle of this clearing is a white building, about the size of a really nice house. It being a church would never have crossed my mind had it not been for the headstones scattered out between us and the building. A graveyard. An old fashioned graveyard.

"That can't be it," Shane says as we pause at the tree line, everyone panting. "Got no steeple, no bells."

He's right, but –

Rick runs to the building. Shane calls after him but he doesn't stop, and now the whole group is bolting towards the may-be-a-church.

I'm fast, I should say that right now. Back in school, I was even faster than nearly every boy in my class. But I'm still a kid, so I can't keep up with Rick and Shane and my dad, not yet. I pump my legs hard, though, content for now with just staying ahead of Carl and Lori and keeping my dad fairly close as our group races through the graves, around the building, to a set of stone steps leading up to red double-doors.

My dad and Rick leap up the stairs and position themselves by these doors, one of them on each side, Rick with his handgun drawn and my dad with his crossbow at the ready. Rick gives Dad a signal and then they each open one door. Shane and Glenn step up behind them immediately, so I can't really see inside, but sometimes ears are all you need. I hear the snarling. I know what it means.

Lori's next to me. She's drawn the weapon she chose earlier, this vicious, curved blade about half the length of her arm, and for one crazy second I think she's going to go in after the walkers herself, but no, of course not, she hands the blade to Rick and he heads into the church. So does Shane. My dad, he gives his crossbow to Glenn in exchange for an odd hooked weapon, and in he goes, too. With them out of the way, I can see now, I can see that this _is_ a church – there's a crucifix hanging at the front – and I can also see that there are three of the walkers, and they're standing in the pews like it's Sunday morning, and there's something very unsettling about that.

Lori squats in front of Carl and talks to him, distracting him, I guess. Carol would do the same for Sophia, I'm sure, but Sophia's not here, and so Carol turns her back to the door and covers her mouth, alone in her world. Me, I watch, even though I'm not sure I'm supposed to. I watch as Rick reaches his walker, the only one on the church's left side, and slams his blade into its head, splitting the skull. I watch Shane stab his walker straight through the forehead. And I watch my dad creep up behind the last walker, a used-to-be woman going after Shane, and chop it through the face.

I'm learning that there's usually a silence. After something like this happens, I mean, after we get violent, after we put down walkers. There's a small pause when it stops, when the killing is over and we're left alone again. Just us people. I don't know why. Maybe it's just my imagination, even.

Now Carol's going through the doorway, Glenn's relaxing, Lori's standing. I take a step forward, then another, and I'm on red carpet. I'd almost forgotten carpet.

_"Sophia!" _Rick screams, and there's so much feeling and rage in that scream that it spooks me and I nearly trip, but I catch myself and lean on a pew, letting the others pass me by and watching my dad. He's at the front of the church, staring up at the crucifix, and it looks like he's praying but I know he's not.

"I'm telling you, it's the wrong church," says Shane, his back on the corpses. He's still holding his knife in his hand, even as blood drips from it and stains this carpet, such a nice carpet. "It's got no steeple, Rick. There's no steeple."

The words are barely out of his mouth when the bell sounds again. _DING DING DING DING_, and it could be Sunday morning with my mom –

Dad rushes from the front, through the group, past me, out the doors. I go after him without a thought, my feet skipping over the steps, almost stumbling, not quite, and I'm on solid ground and the others are behind me and I'm following Dad around the church and there are no bells, no bells, just a long pipe-looking thing running from a small box about a foot over my head all the way up to the roof, where a speaker is. A speaker. A speaker blaring out the sound of that bell.

Nobody's ringing anything. We're alone here.

Glenn opens the small box and breaks something, I don't see what, and the bell stops. My dad, he walks around for a second, head down, and then tells the group, or maybe just Rick or just Shane or just Carol, I don't know, "A timer. It's on a timer."

No bells. No real bells. No people. No Sophia.

"I'm gonna go back in for a bit," says Carol. Nobody else speaks, but I hear them moving. I hear the steps they take back to the church, but I can't seem to stop looking at the timer, at that small box. Glenn leaves that small box, though, and my dad comes over to me. His hand touches my head.

"C'mon," he says. "Let's get in the shade for a minute."

And so we go back into the church, and it is a little cooler in here, but not much. At least there aren't so many bugs. Me and Dad, we stand in the back. Some part of me is aware of being tired but I don't feel like sitting down. I just chew on my knuckle. Rick and Carl and Shane and Glenn are all back here, too, but not close to us. Up at the front, right before the crucifix and on her knees, is Carol. She _is_ praying, I think. Lori sits in the pew behind her and I wonder if she's praying, too.

Dad's got his crossbow back from Glenn. He kneels down, props it up, and rests on it, the way he does sometimes. He snags my hand from my lips. "Quit that. Them fingers ain't gonna have skin left."

I pop them instead, and Dad doesn't say anything about that, even though my mom hated it. Maybe he doesn't know. He hands me a canteen and I drink. I didn't realize I was thirsty. I give it back to him and say quietly, "I like this church. Or, I would've liked it, I think."

He screws the cap back on the canteen. "Didn't your mom take you to church?"

"Yeah. But it was a lot bigger. Not small like this one. Not in the middle of the woods, either. I like that."

He doesn't say anything.

Carol's speaking. Speaking to the crucifix, or to God, I guess. Can't make out the words. I can hear her voice, though, her quivering, weak voice. Voices like that annoy me sometimes, because you gotta be tough in life or why even try? But right now, right now I can't blame Carol. I don't want to. All that quiver in her voice does is make my chest tighten.

"It'da been better if it were me," I say just for Dad to hear, because maybe I've got to let this nagging thought out of my head or it might just grow and eat me all up. And because this is a little easier to talk about than what he asked me if I needed to talk about this morning, and maybe it'll make him forget all that.

"If what were you?"

"If it'd been me and not Sophia. She's just a kid."

". . . Ain't she two years older'n you?"

I sigh. "Yeah, but . . . I'm different." Dad should know that. He _has _to know that, surely, it's obvious, isn't it? "I'm tough. I know how to make it out in the woods. She don't."

_Doesn't._

I shrug, picking at my fingernail. "It just woulda been better," I murmur. "That's all I'm sayin'."

Dad looks at me for a minute. It's one of his thinking looks. Then, "You'd best not let me hear you talk like that again, Sydney Rose."

What? What'd I say that was bad? "Why not?"

"'Cause I don't like it. Now c'mon."

Carol and Lori are coming down the aisle, back to the door. Dad's standing and I do, too, and I want to know if I just made him mad, and how that happened if I did, but it hits me that I've been in a church for a while and I've watched at least one person pray and I haven't even thought to pray myself. That might be some sort of a sin. I glance over at the crucifix, at the figure of a dying Jesus, thin and bloody. I certainly have a lot to pray for.

But my dad and everyone else are going for the doors. Maybe I'll pray later. Or maybe praying is a waste of time, I don't know. But I figure if God listens to prayers he'd be more likely to hear Carol's than mine, anyway. At least at the moment. So I duck my head and walk out the door.


	7. The Gunshot

"Y'all gotta follow the creek bed back," Shane announces outside, where the group has all gathered underneath a tree with far-stretching branches. "Okay, Daryl, you're in charge. Me and Rick, we're just gonna hang back. Search this area another hour or so just to be thorough."

"You're splittin' us up?" my dad says. "You sure?"

"Yeah, we'll catch up to you."

"I wanna stay, too." That's Carl. He steps forward, looking from his dad to Shane without blinking. I eye him. "I'm her friend," he says.

I remember him crawling up into that truck, getting right next to the body, tugging out the weapons, and I think now what I thought then: The kid has spine.

Rick and Lori exchange looks that I guess don't come out to mean no, because Lori then tells Carl, "Just be careful, okay?" and hugs him, saying something about him growing up. I consider asking if I can stay, too – I don't like the idea of Carl getting to do something and me not – but I brush that idea away. My place is with my dad.

Rick takes Lori in his arms, telling her goodbye, and as she pulls away, he stops her and says, "Here, take this." He holds out his handgun, barrel down, the way you're supposed to give a gun to someone, I know. "Remember how to use it?"

Lori gives him a look. Lori reminds me of my mom sometimes. Like anytime she gives a look like that. "I'm not takin' your gun and leaving you unarmed."

"Here, I got a spare."

My dad. He makes a gun appear, some little gun I've never seen on him before, and he hands it to Lori. "Take it." He gives Rick a nod and Rick nods back, and I know at that moment that my dad's not mad at Rick for leaving Merle behind anymore. Does that mean I shouldn't be?

But he left Sophia, too . . .

_I was going to leave T-Dog._

I'm confused and I'm tired and bugs keep biting me. I slap one away now and let Dad nudge me forward, and we walk off, me and Dad and Lori and Carol and Glenn and Andrea. I look over my shoulder once, and even though Carl and Rick and Shane are walking off in another direction, Carl's looking over his shoulder, too. He's almost too far away to tell at this point, but I think our eyes meet. And I think he gives me a smile. And I think I might smile back, just a little, just to be polite.

Or maybe because – and this is just a _maybe _because – he might be starting to grow on me.

But that is a _big _maybe.

. . . . .

Going back, the six of us don't say much, the same way it was this morning. My eyes scope the woods with every step I take, looking not just for walkers but for something, anything – a patch of clothing, a ripped-off knot of blonde hair, maybe even that doll – that points to Sophia. But I see nothing. None of us do.

Sometime in the late afternoon Carol sits on a log without a warning. "So this is it? This the whole plan?" There's hopelessness and disgust in her voice.

My dad sighs, leaning up against a tree. The log Carol is on reaches over here, by him, and so I sit down. An odd mix of pain and pleasure rushes through my legs. My muscles have this bad habit of not telling me how tired they are until they can't take much more. I frown and rub my thigh, telling those muscles to deal with it. Dad, he says, "I guess the plan is to whittle us down into smaller and smaller groups."

And I don't like the way he says that, I don't like the edge of doubt in his voice. But he catches me watching him and winks, so I know we're okay. As he does that, though, Andrea's saying nastily, "Carrying knives and pointy sticks . . . I see _you_ have a gun."

Does she mean my dad? I turn to her, but no, she's not talking to him. Her eyes are on Lori, who looks at her in a cold way that doesn't match the air around us. "Why, you want it?" She puts her backpack down on this log and draws the pistol, holds it out to Andrea. "Here. Take it. I'm sick of the looks you're givin' me."

Andrea glares back at Lori, mouth slightly open like Lori just said something completely unfair, but she's not wrong, Lori. Me, I pay attention, and I've seen those angry glances Andrea keeps throwing Lori's way. I mean, Andrea looks angry a lot lately, but still. She takes the gun now, though, in a slapping way that suggests she thinks the whole thing is completely ridiculous.

My mother would have rolled her eyes at her, and so I do.

Lori sits back down on the log. "Alla you . . ."

All of us? All of us giving her bad looks? I haven't given her a single bad look, didn't know there was reason to. Still don't think there is. My dad gave her the gun, so it must be okay.

But Lori's talking to Carol now. "Honey, I can't imagine what you're going through, and I would do anything to stop it, but you have gotta stop blamin' Rick."

There's a tingling on the back of my neck. Stop blaming Rick. Rick, who left Sophia? I squirm.

"It is in your face _every_ _time_ you look at him. And when Sophia ran, he didn't hesitate, did he? Not for a second."

Carol looks away from her. I do, too.

"I don't know that any of us would have gone after her the way he did – "

My dad would have, I know that. But I don't say anything. I want to chew my knuckle but, since Dad's standing right over me, settle for picking at the skin instead. Because Lori's making good points and making it hard for me to be mad at Rick and making little streams of guilt pool together in my stomach. Especially now that I know my dad's not mad at him, either.

" – or made the hard decisions that he had to make or that anybody could have done it any differently. Anybody?"

No one says a word.

"Y'all look to him," says Lori, "And then you blame him when he's not perfect. If you think you can do this without him, go right ahead. Nobody is stopping you!" She lifts a water bottle to her lips and takes a drink in a somehow heated way. She's just finished putting the cap back on when Andrea holds the pistol back out to her. She takes it silently.

"We should keep moving," Andrea says, and her voice has softened a bit. And I know that Lori's managed to change some part of some game here, and I think that's a good thing. She's been nice to me.

Lori pulls her backpack on and stands, along with Carol. My muscles beg me, beg me _no_, but I grit my teeth and make myself get up. It's not so bad once I'm on my feet, but I know my legs'll go right back to aching later. I'll be fine, though.

More walking. More bugs, more heat. I love the woods, I do, but it's best in the morning. Yeah, in the morning, and in the middle of fall. Waking up in a cold tent, wrapping myself in a puffy coat three times too big, holding a thermos of coffee I won't drink just to keep my fingers warm, listening for rustling in the dry leaves . . . Oh, I'd come home with a sore throat, and Mom would chew my dad out, but I didn't care, I loved it, and I'd sure love it right now. I'd love a lot of things right now.

Like for my dad to not be mad at me. But _is_ he mad at me? I'm not sure. He called me _Sydney Rose_ back at the church, which is never a good sign, but it's not like I did anything bad. I was just talking.

I decide to feel out the situation.

"I beat T-Dog in poker," I tell Dad. We're at the head of the group, of course, basically alone.

"Yeah? Win anything good offa him?"

"We didn't bet."

"Didn't bet? Ain't you s'posed to be a Dixon?"

I giggle, and I know then that he's not mad. He's joking, and he doesn't joke when he's mad. And I'm relieved. But I still don't get –

The gunshot stops my thoughts short. It stops everything short. My dad jerks his head around and his hands tense on his crossbow, even though the shot was far off, echoing around us like it could have been just a dream. But it wasn't. It was a gunshot, very real, and it came from behind us, and I don't see how there's any way it didn't have something to do with Rick and Shane and Carl.

Carl.

And suddenly I really wish I had asked Dad if I could go with them.


	8. Kids Like Carl

Dad makes us keep moving after the gunshot. He actually, literally has to make me. I'm stuck for a while, hearing him and the others talk but not listening to anything that's being said, just staring behind us at the thick woods that offer no answer and gripping my knife as if I'm planning on charging whatever threat there may or may not be, and the others move and I don't, and then Dad's hand clamps down on my shoulder and pulls me along, prods me in front of him. "C'mon, Little Bit. Nothin' we can do."

"But –"

"Walk, Sydney."

And so I do, we all do, but . . . but it was a gunshot! Gunshots don't happen for no reason!

And Lori, Lori's concerned. I know this because I keep checking over my shoulder as we go along, checking for some sort of sign as to what's happened, and half the time I do this I see Lori doing the same thing. And finally, maybe a half-hour after that shot, I hear Andrea ask, "You still worrying about it?" and I stop and turn and see that Lori's stopped and turned, too.

"It was a gunshot," she answers simply.

"We all heard it," Dad says, just as simply.

Lori looks at him then. "Why one? Why just _one_ gunshot?"

Dad does a half-shrug before scanning around us. "Maybe they took down a walker."

He doesn't believe that, though. I know he doesn't, because I don't, and guess what? Neither does Lori.

"Please don't patronize me," she says. _Patronize _means talk to you like you're a little kid. One time I told Merle to quit patronizing me, and then he couldn't stop laughing, it got me so mad. "You know Rick wouldn't risk a gunshot to put down one walker. Or Shane. They'd do it quietly."

She's right, she's right, you kill walkers hands-on or with arrows whenever you can. So the gunshot makes no sense. None. And that's why Lori's worried, that's why I'm . . . I'm a little bit worried.

"Shouldn't they have caught up with us by now?" says anxious Carol.

My dad comes closer to them, the three women and Glenn, and he sighs out, "There's nothin' we can 'bout it anyway. Can't go around these woods chasin' echoes."

His back is to me and so I feel free to glare at him. But then I stop, I make myself stop, because I'm smart and I know he's right. I don't like it, but he's right.

"So what do we do?" Lori asks shortly, pressing her lips together, eyeing Dad.

"Same as we've been," he replies. "Beat the bush for Sophia, work our way back to the highway."

Andrea talks next, and her voice is different from before, because it's purely kind and gentle and not much like the Andrea I've been getting used to. "I'm sure they'll hook up with us back at the RV."

With that, Dad starts walking again, and I start walking again, and so does Glenn, and so does Lori, even. But behind me I hear that kind and gentle voice speak again. "I'm sorry for what you're going through. I know how you feel."

Andrea's talking to Carol, and she's talking about Sophia, I know. The rest of us pause, and my dad looks irritated but doesn't say anything, and I watch as Carol offers Andrea a little smile. "I suppose you do. Thank you." She looks out into the woods, and her eyes are glassy. Wet. "The thought of her, out here, by herself . . . It's the not knowin' that's killing me. I just keep hopin' and prayin' she doesn't wind up like Amy . . ."

Which doesn't seem like the right thing to say. And I think Carol realizes that, because her jaw drops almost as soon as she's said it. "Oh, God," she murmurs, taking Andrea's hands. "That's the worst thing I ever said . . ."

But Andrea shakes her head and smiles in a way that isn't happy but I think is meant to tell Carol it's alright. "We're all hoping and praying with you. For what it's worth."

Then my dad leaves my side. He steps up to the two. "I'll tell you what it's worth – _not a damn thing_. It's a waste of time, all this hopin' and prayin'."

I flinch, because that is _absolutely _not the right thing to say. My mind yanks me back to the morning after the fish fry, when the grownups were dealing with the dead, and my dad pointed around at all of the blood and bodies and yelled that the survivors had this coming for leaving Merle behind . . . That wasn't the right thing to say, either . . . Mom was always better about knowing what to say and when to say it . . .

But my dad keeps going, talking straight to Carol, and his voice is sort of scary but not really, it's different than his usual scary voice, and I can't explain why, but what he says? What he says, the words, they're nice. "'Cause we're gonna locate that little girl, and she's gonna be just _fine_."

He spins away, coming back to me, just like that. "Am I the only one Zen around here? Good Lord!"

He tugs my ponytail on his way past, and I know, I know that he's not mad at them, or at anybody, he's just . . . trying to calm everyone down. Keep things running smooth. I hope the others get that. He's good, my dad. Rough around the edges, Mom called him before. But he's good.

And we move.

. . . . .

I hate sweat. Dad told me once that people sweat to keep cool. Well, I don't think it works, because I'm sweating a lot and I'm still really hot. And the bugs, they like the sweat, I think. Something chomps into the back of my neck now, and I smack it and then wince because my neck is bared and I'm pretty sure I'm getting sunburnt, even with all the leaves casting shadows on us.

But we're close. I know we're close. It's been an hour since we last stopped, and everything around here is familiar, familiar and – in my mind – connecting with images of the RV. I think about asking my dad how much farther but don't, because I don't want him to know that I can't tell. Luckily, about two minutes after I decide not to ask, Lori does.

"Not much," Dad tells her. "Maybe a hundred yards. As the crow flies."

"Too bad we're not crows," grumbles Andrea. She's tired. We all are, except maybe my dad. He doesn't tire easily. I pick up my pace and jump a little ahead of him, just to show him that I could keep going, too, if we had to.

My mind is still on the gunshot, though. I know we came out here looking for Sophia, and maybe it's wrong, but I can't stop thinking about it, that _BANG_, mysterious and bad. What did it mean? What happened? If it wasn't for a walker, then what was it for? And who did it come from? I understand what Carol said, I think, even though it was about Sophia. I understand how the not knowing is the worst –

A scream. Andrea's scream. I look, and what? She's not here? She's not with us, she's not, there's only five of us here, Andrea, _Andrea_ –

My head fuzzes up, thoughts stop for a minute as my heart bangs away, but that doesn't happen to my dad. He's already running as Lori shouts Andrea's name, as I manage to come back to my senses. The rest of us fly after Dad, to Andrea, to the screams, to –

Through the woods, through the woods, just a little ways, but how did she get this far without us noticing? What was she doing?

Wait, is that a _horse?_

Yes, yes, it's a horse, and there's a person on it, too. We near and I see that that person is a woman, a young woman with short brown hair and a flowered shirt. Beyond the horse is a fallen but alright – and I think alright – Andrea, and close to her is a walker, but the walker's on the ground. Is it dead? It's not moving. Dad's stopped, and I stop, and I edge up close to him, my eyes lingering on the motionless walker.

"Lori?" The woman on the horse says to Andrea. She's putting away a baseball bat, sticking it into a pocket hooked onto her saddle, and I look from the bat to the walker and I get it. "Lori Grimes?"

"I'm Lori," Lori says from my left, and I'm confused, I'm confused, how – ?

"Rick sent me," the woman says to her, talking fast. "You gotta come now!"

"What?"

"There's been a accident! Carl's been shot!"

Carl's been shot.

_Carl's been shot. _

_Carl. Shot._

I don't look at Lori. I don't look at my dad. My eyes are trapped on this woman, this woman on this horse with this news, this news, this news that doesn't make any sense, because Carl is just a kid, and kids don't get shot, especially not kids like Carl, kids who have spine but a nice enough smile that no one would ever, ever draw on them, and . . . and . . .

"He's still alive, but you've gotta come now!"

Alive. Alive. Alive. But _still _alive. Not just _alive. Still _alive_._

More words. Words, words. Lori's getting up on the horse, sitting behind the woman. My dad's shouting. The woman's shouting. Glenn says _uh-huh_. The horse is leaving. Carl's been shot. Carl's been shot. The walker starts to get up and my dad sends an arrow through its head. Movement, movement. Andrea standing. My dad saying my name. My dad grabbing my arm, bending down to me. My name again. Sydney. Sydney. But Carl's been shot . . .

"Sydney!"

Dad's taken a hold of the back of my head. I blink. I blink. Carl. No. Now, here, woods, Dad, focus. I blink. I look at my dad.

"We gotta get back," he tells me. "We're almost there, let's go."

"Carl . . ." I hear myself mutter.

"I know. But we gotta go. So c'mon, don't make me drag you, I'm tired. C'mon!"

He's tired? But he doesn't get tired. Not often. Not the point, not what I need to think about. What do I need to think about? The RV. Get back to the RV. Things will be okay at the RV. I'm nodding. My legs move, and they're numb, but not because they're spent, they're numb in a different way. My body's numb. Everywhere. Inside and out. This is wrong. This is all so, so wrong, because kids like Sophia don't get lost in the woods and kids like Carl don't get shot.

Still alive. Still. Still.

Not _going to live_. Not _okay_. _Still alive._

_ Still_.


	9. Echoes, Pills, and Being Sneaky

Dad and Merle and I found a bluff once on a hunting trip. Or, maybe they'd found it before and were showing it to me, I can't remember. What I do remember is that my dad showed me how I could yell off the bluff – "Go right on ahead, Daryl, you just scare off all the damn game," Merle had griped – and have whatever I said echo back to me. One time I yelled something, I think just my name, and it came back to me three times. I thought that was pretty impressive. But that echo? That has nothing on the one that bounces around in my head as we walk the final stretch to the highway, as we climb up the hill, as we reach the guardrail and see Dale standing on the road with his rifle.

This echo is _Still alive . . . Still alive . . . Still alive . . ._

_ Carl's been shot _will jump in occasionally. But mostly it's just that, just _Still alive_. These are the words that haunt me as I make myself climb over the guardrail, place my feet on asphalt, stand straight and be steady.

Glenn, Glenn's talking. Listen, Sydney, listen.

". . . like Zorro on a horse and took Lori." Glenn's out of breath, from the hill, from the topic, from both, I'm not sure.

Dale turns to my dad, stepping over the guardrail after me. "You let her?"

"Climb down out of my ass, old man!" Dad's in a bad mood now. Somewhere in my mind I wonder how long that'll last, but mostly my mind is too busy dealing with pounding hooves and gasps and _Still alive . . . Still alive . . . Still alive . . . _Dad's talking more. "Rick sent her. She knew Lori's name, and Carl's." He brushes past Dale, over to the motorcycle.

Dale's asking about screams then, Andrea's screams, but I don't pay it any mind. I'm following Dad over to the motorcycle. He puts his crossbow on the back and I lean against the car the bike's beside. But the throbbing in my legs reminds me that I've been walking all day, and so I sink to the ground.

"Hey," my dad says, sitting down beside me. The voice he used with Dale is gone, which offers me a tiny bit of relief. He hands me the canteen and I gulp some water down, and even though it's warm, it still feels good sliding down my throat. I'm a little more like me when I finish, the echo isn't as loud, and my heart isn't pounding in my ears anymore. Meanwhile, Dad says, "Gettin' shot ain't a death sentence. You heard her, Carl's alive."

I bite my lip, take two breaths. "She said 'still.' She said he was _still_ alive. She didn't say . . ." My throat closes up and I cough. "I mean, she didn't say he'd be _okay_ . . ."

Dad rubs my neck. "Stop it. You're overthinkin' that. We don't know nothin' about it, no matter what you think you heard."

"I don't _think_ I heard anythin', you heard her, too! She said –"

"I said _stop it_. Look, you're makin' yourself cry, we don't want that, do we?"

He's right on both accounts. A tear just slipped from my eye and I hate it. I grimace and put fists into my eye sockets, drowning out _still still still _with _stop stop stop_. Dad keeps on rubbing my neck. The lump in my throat eventually dissolves and I remove my fists, see stars for a minute, and then feel almost normal again. Just really, really exhausted.

"Good girl," Dad murmurs. He kisses the side of my head and stands. "How 'bout I get us some food?"

"I ain't hungry."

"Well, you gotta eat."

So I let him walk off to dig something up, and I just sit there and chew on my knuckle with my head turned so he won't catch me at it, and I listen to the echo in my head, teasing me like a sixth-grader on the playground at school.

. . . . .

We gather beside the RV door less than twenty minutes later (all of us except T-Dog, who Dale says it sick). Apparently at some point when the woman on the horse was talking to us, she gave us directions to where Carl was. Some house – no, a farm – close by. Within a few miles. Dale wants us to go tonight.

"I won't do it," Carol says as soon as he suggests this. "We can't just leave."

I look up at her from my place next to Dad. I really want to lean against him, my dad, close my eyes and rest and let him set his hand on my head or my shoulder, but this is an important discussion, and I'm old enough to be a part of it, and so I cross my arms and listen, listen as Dale sighs and explains.

"Carol," he says wearily, leaning against the RV's open door, "The group is split. We're scattered and weak."

"What if she comes back? And we're not here?" Carol's voice is high. "It could happen . . ."

Sophia. Sophia, delicate Sophia. In all of my thoughts about Carl and guns and bullets and _still alive still alive still alive_, Sophia has slipped farther back into my mind than she should have. Now I pull her up again, and I imagine her showing up here, dirty and bleeding but alright, only she finds herself all alone on a dark, lonely highway . . .

"If she came back and no one was here . . ." I say faintly. All eyes turn to me, and I turn mine to the ground. I don't want to say anything else, so I just shake my head, let that do my talking.

"That would be awful," Andrea finishes for me, and I go from shaking my head to nodding it.

"Okay," says my dad. I look up and he's nodding, too. "We gotta plan for this. I say tomorrow morning is soon enough to pull up stakes."

I swallow. "But Sophia –"

"Listen, Syd," he says softly before addressing the other four again. "That'll give us enough time to rig a big sign. Leave her some supplies."

Yes. Yes, that takes care of Sophia and gets us to Carl. Yes, I like this plan. Dad's smart.

He gestures at me. "Syd and I'll hold here tonight. Stay with the RV."

"If the RV is staying, I am too," says Dale.

"Thank you," says Carol, looking from one man to the other. "Thank you both."

A muscle in my calf cramps. I cave and lean on my dad. His arm falls loosely against my side, the tips of his fingers tracing a circle on my arm.

"I'm in," I hear Andrea say just as I close my eyes.

Glenn's next. "Well, if you're all staying, then I'm –"

"No, not you, Glenn," Dale interrupts. "You're going. Take Carol's Cherokee."

"Me? Why is it always _me_?"

"You have to find this farm, reconnect with our people, and see what's going on," Dale says, his tone leaving no room for argument. "But most important, you have to get T-Dog there. This is not an option."

T-Dog? It's that bad? I open my eyes and follow Dale's pointing arm over to the other end of the RV, where T-Dog is hunched over, covered with a blanket. "That cut has gone from bad to worse," Dale says. "He has a very serious blood infection. Get him to that farm –"

"Hold on, babe . . ." Dad murmurs to me, nudging me away from him and going over to the motorcycle. Dale's Papaw-like voice reminds me of a lullaby even as it's going on about antibiotics, and I have to work to keep my eyelids up as Dad rummages through the motorcycle bags. He pulls off some white rags and shoots Dale a look just before his other hand comes up with a big plastic bag full of orange medicine bottles. It's Merle's, I've seen it once or twice.

"Keep your oily rags off my brother's motorcycle." Dad throws those rags at Dale as he comes back, plopping the bag onto the hood of a car. "Why'd you wait till now to say anything? Got my brother's stash."

"What stash?" I ask.

Dad doesn't seem to hear me. He rifles through the medicine. "Crystal . . . X, don't need that . . . Got some kickass painkillers." He tosses one of the bottles to Glenn, looks again, and then tosses another bottle to Dale. "Oxycycline. Not the generic stuff, neither. That's first class . . . Merle got the clap on occasion."

I'm lost. "What's the cl –"

"Don't ask, Little Bit."

. . . . .

I end up falling asleep before nightfall, right after Glenn and T-Dog leave. I knock out in the RV's passenger seat, of course, because I think it's sort of my spot now. I dream of a doll that gets lost in the woods and shot, shot by Andrea on accident, and Dale's there, shaking his head and telling Andrea he told her so, he told her so. Then the doll takes some pills and heals up, and then it suddenly turns into Sophia, and she runs from us all, and I go after her, chase her into a barn, but instead of Sophia I find Carl, and _he's_ shot . . . right in the head, like a walker . . .

I wake up and I hate dreams.

It's dark outside. There's a blanket at my feet and noises behind me tell me I'm not alone. I listen. Two sounds try to drown each other out: This clicking, mechanical noise and sobbing. I don't know about that first one, but the second is Carol. Those sobs, they reach into me and clench my stomach, hurting, hurting really bad. I curl up into a ball and don't even bother pretending I can go back to sleep now. I want my dad. Where –

And just then: "I need my clip now."

That's him, that's Dad. I twist around. He's standing by the table, crossbow over his shoulder, and I can see the back of a blonde head – Andrea's sitting there. She hands him something, the clip from his gun, I guess – what's she doing with that? – and as he fixes the weapon up he tells her, "I'm gonna walk the road. Look for the girl."

The sobbing pauses. My dad turns his head to the back room, where I'd bet Carol is. I see his head move in a quick nod. Then he turns this way, going for the door.

"Dad? I wanna go." I put my feet on the ground, my eyes wide. I'm ready.

But Dad, he shakes his head when he sees me. "Nuh-uh. You stay here, get some sleep."

"I slept. I ain't tired no more. Please?"

"No, Sydney. Go back to sleep." Then he's gone. I sigh and slump against the seat. About ten seconds after Dad steps out of the left-open door, Andrea's up from the table. She brushes gazes with me as she follows Dad outside.

"I'm coming, too," I hear her say.

"I'm goin' for a walk," Dad says loudly. He must be talking to Dale, yes, Dale will be keeping watch up top. "Shine some light in the forest. If she's out there, it'll give her somethin' to look at."

"Do you think that's a good idea right now?"

"Dale," Andrea snaps, and that's all she says, but I know that sometimes grownups pack a lot of meaning into single words. Like in that word, Andrea just told Dale that she's really mad at him.

Footsteps, then nothing. I watch out the passenger window as the figures of Dad and Andrea fade into darkness, Dad's spotlight the only sign that they're still out there as they move among the cars, over to the woods.

I'm mad. Dad should have let me go. What am I supposed to do? Sit here and think about Carl, lying somewhere with a hole through his body? Or Sophia, off in the woods alone without a clue of what to do to stay alive?

I can't do anything about Carl. Not tonight. But I _could _have done something about Sophia. I _could _have gone to look for her.

But _no_.

Dad still treats me like a little kid in a lot of ways, and it ain't fair. When I told him how Sophia was just a kid and he acted surprised that I thought of her that way? That was wrong. I may be younger, but I can handle myself _way _better than that twelve-year-old baby. I wonder what she's doing right now . . . huddling against a tree . . . or running through the dark . . . scared, clinging to her doll . . .

And with those thoughts, those simple, sad thoughts, the poison in my heart – the fury – it all drains away. I'm left empty of everything but guilt and pity, and it doesn't help that Carol's whimpering. I can't just sit here. I can't just sit here and listen to her and do nothing while her daughter's missing and maybe even –

Not going to think about that. That's not how it is.

I check out my window. I can still see my dad's spotlight.

I can't, I _can't _just sit here. I have to at least help. Even if my dad doesn't know it . . .

Oh, he'd kill me if he saw.

So I won't let him see.

I can be sneaky.

I feel my waist. My knife, my nice new one, all sharp and ready, it's still hooked onto my jeans.

My legs make the decision for me, really. They were so tired earlier today, but now they're as alive and strong as ever. They lift me off the seat. They form into tiptoes. They take me down the RV steps, quiet as a mouse, through the open door and into the warm moonlit night, and then it's too late to turn back, isn't it?

I press against the side of the RV, keeping out of Dale's sight. How to do this, how to do this . . . The cars. I'm small enough to hide behind the cars, if I'm really careful, and even crawl under most of them, like I did with that truck when I went to T-Dog yesterday, during the walker attack.

_Dad's going to get so mad._

_ He won't see me. He'll never see me._

I take a deep breath. I still have an eye on Dad's spotlight, bobbing by the guardrail, but I have to be quick if I want to keep it in sight, and I _definitely _have to keep it in sight, I can't throw all caution to the wind.

I dart to the nearest car and duck behind it, my footsteps quiet – this is where being half-raised by a hunter comes in handy. I wait for Dale to call my name, to call my dad, to ruin my plan. But he doesn't. I'm being too sneaky.

I look over at the next car. It's high enough off the ground for me to just slip right under it, and so I do. From then on, it's pretty much that easy. I crawl along the asphalt, and my elbows don't like it, but I grit my teeth and do it, because this is for Sophia. Sophia, all alone and scared.

I reach the guardrail and half-stand. Dad's light is still there, far but not too far into the woods. I risk a look over the car I've just come up from and see that Dale is looking the other way. Perfect. I climb over the guardrail and those strong legs of mine are clumsy carrying me down the slope, but I manage to stay on my feet and then I'm on flat ground again, and the hill is now guarding me from Dale's eyes. I'm home free. All I have to do from here is follow Dad's spotlight and look for Sophia.

I take one step forward and that's when it occurs to me that I'm alone in these woods for the first time. Well, not really _alone_, I'd never do that. I'm pretty much with my dad, he's right up there, even if he doesn't know it. But I'm closer to alone than I've ever been before. I look into the dark forest and a tingling feeling that feels a little like fear crawls up my ribs, seeps into my gut.

But I know the woods. Even at night, I know the woods. And I'm brave. And this is for Sophia. I take a breath, huff it out, focus my attention on Dad's spotlight. And into the woods I go.

**. . . . .**

**A.N.: Three updates in one day! This is what happens when I have unexpected free time . . . Hope you all enjoy. Remember that I would love to hear any thoughts/general feedback if you have the time. Thanks for reading!**


	10. Waste of An Arrow

My dad said he was shining a light for Sophia to see, but the reasons go beyond that, I realize too late. Walking in the woods in the dark, with a roof of leaves blocking out most of the moonlight, is not what I could call easy. My eyes adjust alright, but I still stumble more than a few times as I follow Dad and Andrea, two jumping lights – one smaller than the other, Andrea must have brought a flashlight – that I keep about eighty or so feet ahead of me. Sometimes closer. Yeah, I try to keep as close as possible, especially since the lights are facing the opposite direction of me and it feels like they could just slip away at any second and leave me alone in the black. I also like to hear the sounds of their voices, my dad's, Andrea's. And I like to keep away from the things that move behind me, things that crunch leaves, break branches. Though that's all probably just my imagination. Or just a squirrel or rabbit or snake or something. I know that. But still.

It's a challenge, keeping up with Dad and Andrea as we travel deeper and deeper into the forest, since not only am I doing it without any light but I have to be extra quiet. I'm not as good as my dad at making my footsteps light, soundless, but I'm still pretty good, and I do it, squinting at the ground sometimes but mostly just relying on luck to keep me from stepping on something I don't want to step on.

And I look for Sophia, of course, look for her shape in the shadows, clues in the night. I even call to her a few times, in a whisper. But I never get an answer.

Sometimes I can make out what Dad and Andrea are saying to each other, but that usually means I've gotten too close and need to back off and so I only catch a few things here and there. Like one time, when Dad says, "She could be holed off in a farmhouse somewhere. People get lost, and they survive. Happens all the time."

"She's only twelve," Andrea replies.

"So? My kid's ten. She'd make it through, no problem."

I grin. He sounds proud, in his own way.

"And hell, I was younger than both of 'em and I got lost. Nine days . . ."

And that's all I hear, because I know I should hang back farther, even though Dad's never told me this story and want to hear more. Maybe I can figure out a way to bring it up later.

We've been out here thirty minutes when I fall. The underbrush is heavy and tricky, which I can handle fine in the daytime, but things are more complicated at night. So something catches my ankle mid-step and sends me down. My knees collide with the ground and I skid a bit and my left knee burns in a way that lets me know I've just managed to cut it, even through these jeans. Worse, I make noise, and that forces me to drop all the way down, flat, as the grownups' lights spin this way. I hear Dad's voice, then Andrea's. Silence. Dad's voice again. And footsteps. I peek, and they're moving on. I sigh and sit up. I touch my knee and feel a small hole in the denim and warm liquid that of course is blood. The cut stings, but I don't think it's deep. I don't look around to see what I cut myself on, but I don't have to, because my hand presses on something else sharp on my way to a stand, and it doesn't press hard but it presses enough, and I know: Thorns. I hate thorns.

But I'm tough and I have a job to do. So on I walk, turning to survey the area every now and again, whispering _Sophia! _and watching for walkers and ignoring the stinging pain and the spreading, sticky patch of wetness on my jean leg.

I can tell when something changes later on. Those two lights I'm following pause and then veer off a bit, going a slightly different direction than the one my dad's been on so far. My heart starts beating faster, but I focus on my footsteps, keeping them soft, can't let that change. I watch and creep along, but within a minute the lights have come to a full-on stop. My dad and Andrea are standing still. What's going on? I can hear them talking, can't tell what they're saying. I have to risk it, I have to. I allow myself a nibble on my knuckle before I walk slowly, silently, closer and closer to the two lights, until I can hear better. And when I _can_ hear better, it's not just my dad and Andrea I'm hearing. There's a walker growling, too. There's a walker growling, and it's all I can do not to go running to my dad right then, punishment be damned. But I don't do that. I cover my mouth and listen, because if the walker's not dead yet my dad must have a reason, and Dad's talking right now.

"Dumbass didn't know enough to shoot himself in the head," he says, "Turned himself into a big, swingin' piece of bait. And a mess."

What? I step closer, I can't help it. Step, step, step, and I can see it then, I can make it out, a campsite.

Andrea's coughing. "You alright?" Dad asks.

"Tryin' not to puke."

"Go ahead, if you gotta."

_I'm_ already sick to my stomach just hearing them talk, just listening to the walker. I don't understand, but I have to see. Like a car wreck. I move closer, I sneak along, closer, closer, until I'm right on top of the campsite, until I can see the whole place and the back of Dad's head and Andrea, stooped over, saying she's fine but she needs to talk about something else, asking about how my dad learned to shoot, and I don't listen to his answer, because I'm too focused on the thrashing walker hanging from a tree beyond the two. My dad has his spotlight on it, so I can see it well, too well, and my belly swirls inside of me but I don't puke, I just stare, I stare at this living corpse as it dangles from the rope around its neck, its arms outstretched towards my dad, legs kicking around.

_Dumbass didn't know enough to shoot himself in the head. _This was suicide.

"I guess it's the closest he's been to food since he turned," Dad's saying now. "Look at him, hangin' up there like a big piñata." He moves his spotlight closer, puts it right on the legs of the walker, and I see that they're basically just bone. Bloody bone. My dad's voice is fearless, as always. "The other geeks came and ate all the flesh off his legs."

Andrea throws up. "I thought we were changing the subject!" she croaks after.

"Call that payback, for laughin' about my itchy ass," Dad replies, and I don't know what he's talking about and I don't care. I want us to leave. I want my dad to put the walker down and then I want us to leave.

Dad turns the spotlight this way and I shrink against a tree. But no, _not_ this way, just close, he hasn't seen me, he's not going to see me. "Let's head back."

What? But the walker, the walker –

Andrea speaks for me, speaks for hidden-in-the-shadows me. "Aren't you gonna –"

My dad glances back at the geek. "No. He ain't hurtin' nobody. Ain't gonna waste an arrow, either."

The walker snarls, a rabid dog but worse, arms reaching and fingers grasping air.

"He made his choice," Dad says. "Opted out."

And I get it then, I get it. How this hanging walker could match up with suicide. This was a man, this was a man who got bit and decided to kill himself. Didn't shoot himself in the head, left his brain intact, so he became a walker. But he killed himself, still.

And that's when anger comes. Because my dad, my dad has that same easy, _off_ tone he had earlier today, when we found the man in the tent who'd shot himself. I know what that tone means now. I get it, I get it, it means _disapproval_. And I think, I think it might even mean _you're a coward. _And that tone, that tone riles me up, because getting bit and killing yourself? That's _Mom_. That's Mom, and there was _nothing wrong with that_, and my dad has no right, _no right_ to be mad at Mom –

_Stop. Stop. _Now is not the time.

"Let him hang," Dad says, and I grit my teeth, dig my fingers into bark. But I keep swallowing back the mad and just listen, watch, as Andrea steps closer to the walker even as Dad steps away. There's silence between them before Dad moves to her again. "You wanna live now? Or not?"

Andrea looks at him.

"It's just a question."

" . . . An answer for an arrow. Fair?"

I _think_ I hear Dad say yes, say _mmhmm_, and then I _know_ he must have, because Andrea talks.

"I don't know if I want to live. Or if I have to, or . . . or if it's just a habit."

My anger is slowly replaced with sadness and I'm not totally sure why. I'm just sure I'm tired. I want to go back to the RV and sleep. I should never have left, this was all pointless, Sophia's still missing and I've gotten myself upset with Dad and I hate that and I'm just tired.

"That's not much of an answer," my dad says, but he raises his crossbow. Just as he does though, Andrea says something else, something even quieter.

"Sydney wanted to stay behind. Didn't she?" It's the kind of question that's really more of a statement, and it makes me bite into the side of my cheek. I taste blood and it reminds me about the cut on my knee, and I reach and feel it, and it's not bleeding so much anymore, but it still hurts a lot. I don't care. I move even closer to the campsite, leaning against the nearest tree, not wanting to miss a word.

My dad, my dad doesn't answer her right away. "My kid ain't suicidal," he eventually says. "That's your territory." And then there's the hiss of an arrow and the crunch of a skull and the walker in the tree is quiet and still.

"Waste of an arrow . . ." Dad mutters before turning. He walks off, going at an angle from where I am, so I'm safe. Andrea follows after a couple of seconds. Once their backs are to me, my foot decides it needs to move forward, and I don't want to, I don't want to see the walker any closer, but somehow I take one step, two, out from behind the tree, and then my foot lands on a branch and there's a _snap _that I swear can be heard all over Georgia. And now I'm in the spotlight in the worst possible way. I flinch against the light, but I would've flinched anyway at the tone of my dad's voice.

"_Sydney? _Son of a –"

He turns the spotlight to the ground, and I catch his other arm falling from his waist, from his knife, and even without light, I can tell my dad's face has taken on a very bad expression that I don't see all that often. An expression that comes with a look that doesn't mean anything good for the person on the receiving end of it. And me, I'm that person right now.

He moves over to me, _towers_ over me, and my shoulders slouch right away, all by themselves, because my body wants to make me small now.

"What the _hell_ are you doin' out here?" he hisses.

I inhale. My eyes dart to Andrea, but she can't help me, and so I look at the ground. "I . . . I followed you."

Dad makes a huffing noise. Like he just can't believe how stupid I am.

"How'd you get past Dale?" asks Andrea.

I shrug. I need water. "I snuck under the cars."

"You snuck under . . . _Jesus Christ_ . . ." Dad turns away for a second, takes a few steps, spins back. Oh, he's _mad_. I knew it, I knew he would be, why did I let myself do this? Why didn't I stay in the RV?

"Like I said," he growls to Andrea. "We're headin' back, now." He takes my arm – his grip is stiff – and pulls me around, points me in the right direction. "My kid and me gotta have ourselves a little chat about _mindin'_."

And I want to sink into the ground and hide forever.


	11. Chatting

"Sydney, c'mere."

Those words shouldn't make me want to turn and run, especially not when they come from someone I love so much, but they do. My dad steps onto the highway after our all-too-short, all-too-silent walk back and tosses the order right over his shoulder, shortly, harshly, and it pours dread straight into my stomach. Well, more dread. And it feels like sludge.

I swing my legs over the guardrail and glance back at Andrea. But just like before, in the woods, she can't help me, and her face says that plainly. My dad's going off into the lake of cars. Away from the RV instead of towards it. I have to go after him. I have to take whatever's coming to me. _Take it like a man_, Merle would say. And I don't got much of an option.

So I move, slow, my shoes scraping along the asphalt as I follow Dad past this car and that car and this van and to a green car with a wide hood, which Dad drops his crossbow and his turned-off spotlight on top of, suddenly enough to catch me off guard. He takes a few more steps away, but I know he means to stop here, where the RV is to our left and close enough so that we can be seen, but too far, I think, for us to be heard very well. I sit on this green car's hood and crack my fingers. I listen to Andrea's and Dale's voices, then I hear the RV door, and then I feel very, very much alone.

A second or two goes by before my dad faces me and it starts.

"I should wear you out right here 'n now."

I swallow. Not like I expected much different, but still. Thinking it and hearing it are two different things. "Please don't, Dad."

"Well, you might need it! Might teach you to mind!"

He'd be yelling, if he could. I can hear it in the fierceness of his whisper. He's coming towards me now. I make myself hold still, my fingers clenching the car, as he puts one hand on either side of me and brings his head close to mine. "I told you _to stay in the RV!"_

I try to look at him but it's hard. My eyes end up going back and forth between him and the road. "I wanted to help find Sophia."

And is that really my voice? That little voice, is it really mine?

"By what, gettin' yourself bit? How's that gonna help her, huh?"

"I wouldn'ta got bit," I protest weakly, because I don't know what else to do. "You were there."

"You think I coulda protected you with you sneakin' behind me like that?"

I don't have an answer. At least not one that's going to help me. So instead I just mumble, "I'm sorry I didn't mind."

"No you ain't, you're sorry ya got caught." He pushes off the car, paces away, paces back. He's going fast, his fingers are moving, his jaw is tight, and whatever he's gonna do, whip me or whatever, I wish he'd just get it over with so we can move on. I can't take him being this mad. He leans over me again and I duck my head, because my eyes are already wet and I don't want him to see. "Now listen close, missy –"

But he stops then. His hand's just brushed against my left knee, and I watch as he raises his palm and takes in the dark smudge on his skin. "Damn it, Sydney –"

"It ain't bad," I mutter, working to keep my voice normal. But Dad's already rolling up my jean leg, easy, since they're a little too big anyway. "I just fell on some thorns. Think only one of 'em got me."

Dad grabs his spotlight, flips a switch, and turns the thing on my knee, which is covered in blood, but it's mostly just blood that's smeared around. The tear in my skin looks pretty mean, though. And it feels pretty mean, now that I'm thinking about it.

Dad sighs, a long sigh that has a touch of a growl to it. He keeps looking at my knee and it's quiet. Then, finally, "You got your knife?"

"Yeah."

He turns off the spotlight and sets it beside me. "Don't move. Looks like Andrea's on watch now, she's got an eye on you. But you think you see somethin', go ahead and scream at her and run to the RV. I'll be right back."

I nod and he goes off. I hear him climb the RV's steps. I take the time to let three tears fall, and my body tries its hand at sobs but I manage to gulp most of them down. I'm quiet when my dad gets back, maybe a minute after he left. He has a First Aid kit in hand. He sits on the hood beside me and wordlessly goes to work on my knee, wiping off the blood and then pouring some sort of burning liquid on the cut. His face is set the whole time he does this.

"I don't like it when you're mad at me," I find myself whispering.

"Well, don't do things I gotta get mad atcha for." Dad sounds tired. He twists the cap back onto the bottle of liquid-that-burns and drops it into the half-empty First Aid kit, which is all lit up by the spotlight. He digs around and finds a Band-Aid.

"I just wanted to help find Sophia."

"Yeah, I heard you the first time." He presses the Band-Aid onto my knee and runs his thumb over it to make it stick. Then he tugs my stained pant leg back over the cut and rubs his eyes. "Lucky it was a thorn and not a walker."

This makes me fidget. I never really considered it, did I? The chance that I'd run into a walker? I mean, I looked for walkers while I was out, but that was mainly out of habit, wasn't it? My worst fear, really, was that my dad would catch me. And now I've gotten myself into this, and only now am I realizing that things could have been so much worse.

"Sydney, I don't tell you to do somethin' 'cause I like bossin' you around." He's still using that tired voice that's better than the scary one but still makes me feel bad. Really bad. "I tell you to do somethin' 'cause it's good for you."

"I know . . ." And I do. I've heard this talk before, from him and Mom and once even some sort of version from Merle.

"Well, then next time do what I tell ya. If you ain't noticed, none of the other kids are doin' too hot right now –"

Images of Carl soaked in blood, Sophia lost and crying, and I bite my lip.

" – and I'd rather not let you get like them, if you don't mind."

I nod again, not looking at him. His gaze is too sharp. More time passes. And more time. I play with my hands, shift around. Finally I can't take it.

"You gonna wear me out?" I try to make my voice strong, I try, but it still sounds like I'm half my age.

My dad, he snorts. I wait, picking at my knuckle, and soon he says, "You gonna make me regret it if I don't?"

And now, now I force myself to look straight at him, because I know it's important here. Eye contact, like Mom always told me – show 'em that you mean what you say. "No. I promise."

Dad just stares back at me for a long time. I got no idea what he's thinking and I hate that. Then he says, "It's been a rough coupla days. And I ain't got much in me right now. So I'm gonna go ahead and take your word on this."

A weight lifts from my chest.

"But Sydney Rose, I'm warnin' ya . . ."

That weight drops back, or at least part of it does. Dad's voice has picked up an edge that means _I mean it._

"You knew better'n this and you damn sure'll know better the second time. You put yourself in harm's way again, I'll whip ya good. Won't lose any sleep over it. Hear me?"

I squirm. But it's more than fair and I know it. "Yeah."

And that's it. It's over. He jerks his head at the RV, and I turn and see Andrea standing against the moon like a gargoyle in a movie. "Go on, get inside."

I slide off the hood, and at first I'm just planning on bolting before my dad changes his mind, but then, sort of as an afterthought or maybe just an act of impulse, I jump back up and wrap my arms around his neck. I kiss his cheek. It's scratchy. He gives me a squeeze, and I know he loves me, and then he loosens his hold and helps me down. "Git outta here. I'll be in in a minute. Gotta think 'bout some things."

And so I run off to the RV, leaving him to his thinking. And I'm happy, until I remember something, right out of the blue. I remember the way my dad talked about that walker in the forest.

_He made his choice. Opted out. Let him hang._

And I think about Mom.

I slow, I stop, I turn around and look at the outline of my dad. I almost go back, I do, I almost ask him about it. _Confront_ him, my mom'd say. But I change my mind. It's late – or really early, I'm not sure – and now, just when my dad let me slide on something we both know was really wrong, is not the smart time to bring up something like this. So I save it. I push down my dwindling mad feelings and my confusion and I push this question, this _Are you mad at Mom _question into the back of my mind. I know I'll have to bring it out before too long, and I want to, really, in a way. Even if it makes me nervous to hear the answer. But not tonight. Tonight, I'm going to count my blessings and go to sleep.

**. . . . .**

**A.N.: I've posted a one-shot from Daryl's POV that takes place right after Sydney leaves Daryl to think. It's Chapter 2 of "Little Bit."**


	12. The Farm

The next morning, Dad tells me – again – that I can't ride on the motorcycle. I don't think that's fair, since this farm's only supposed to be a few miles away, but I'm not going to argue after last night. And anyway, I'm too nervous to care all that much. Because today, in probably just a little while, we're going to find out how Carl is.

_Still _alive, that girl on the horse said.

And so I ride in the RV with Dale and Carol. Andrea drives a car Shane wanted and my dad and his motorcycle go ahead of her. The trip is short but it feels longer than the few minutes it takes.

We go through a gate and then drive along a small dirt road. There are woods to our left and a field to our right at first, and then we turn and go through the field, the field of tall, yellow-and-green grass, and there are _cattle_ in this field. Real, live cattle, grazing like the world is the same as it ever was. And then I see buildings in the distance, popping up against the sky as we get closer and closer. Two of them look like barns, and the one in the middle, it's a house. A big, white house, and before long I can tell it's old, the kind of house that would look really out of place and probably be haunted if it was back home, in my mom's neighborhood, but here it fits just fine.

I like this place instantly. But I know better than to say it out loud to Dale and Carol, because then those feelings would feel more permanent, and it would hurt more if I needed to take them back. Like if we have to leave soon. Or if Carl's died here and these fields and that house all become tainted –

I chew my knuckle.

We reach the house and slow. It's even bigger than I thought. There are people walking up to us as we park, and I look closer, and I realize one of them is Glenn and one of them is Shane, though he looks really strange, wearing these baggy overalls that don't suit him at all. There are three others with them, two girls and a boy. I don't wait around in here to find out more. As soon as Dale shuts off the RV, I'm out the door.

Andrea's leaving Shane's car and my dad's just got off the motorcycle as I start towards the house. And one of the girls with Glenn and Shane? She's the girl who was on the horse. The girl who said _still _alive. Just as I notice this, the front door – a screen door – opens up and out come Rick, Lori, and T-Dog and a woman and an old man I don't know. They walk down the steps of the house's long porch and I move beside my dad, and my heart starts to pound and my palms are sweaty. I switch my gaze back and forth between Rick and Lori, and they both look tired, but their faces don't give much else away. I take a deep breath. Dad gets his crossbow from the back of the motorcycle.

"How is he?" Dale's come up behind me.

And then, and then Lori's smiling, and something inside of me comes undone, but in a very good way. "He'll pull through."

He'll pull through.

_He'll pull through._

Such a better echo. I let out a quiet breath that shakes inside my throat.

"Thanks to Hershel," Lori adds, and she looks at the old man as she says this. "And-and his people, and . . ."

"And Shane," Rick finishes. His face is more solemn than Lori's and his voice is raspier than normal. He looks back at him, at Shane, standing off to the side in those baggy overalls. "We'da lost Carl if not for him."

Shane eyes us all but doesn't say anything. I sort of lose track of things after that, like I do sometimes. There's hugging and someone says "Thank God" and Rick tells us it was a hunting accident, but I stay out of it and just breathe deeply in and out, letting that thing that's come undone inside of me relax all the way.

Because he'll pull through.

Carl's alive.

. . . . .

I pick up the story in bits and pieces as the morning goes on. I find out how Carl got hit when a man named Otis was shooting at a deer. I find out how Shane and Otis went to a nearby high school last night to pick up a machine that Carl needed for surgery, and how Shane and the machine came back but Otis didn't.

There's a funeral – or a memorial, I think that's what it's called when there's no body – a memorial for Otis soon after we arrive. It feels wrong to be there, because you're not supposed to feel happy at things like this, and I can't just stop feeling happy that Carl's alive – not _still _alive, just flat-out alive. I keep on a solemn face, though, as Hershel reads from the Bible and his people add stones to the pile of rocks that will act as a marker for Otis. It's a nice place, under a shady tree, a ways from the old house but close enough that you can see it from here.

Then Hershel asks Shane to speak for Otis. Shane doesn't want to, but Patricia – Otis's wife – begs him, which I understand, because Shane was the last one with Otis, and Patricia says she wants to know his death had meaning, and so Shane talks. He talks about how Otis really wanted to save Carl and so when things got bad – when they were almost out of bullets and after Shane had hurt his leg – Otis sent him ahead with what Carl needed. Otis said he'd cover Shane but he ended up getting taken down. Eaten.

The thought makes me cringe.

Shane finishes telling this story, this dark story on such a pretty day under such a nice tree, and Patricia is staring at him and crying, and Shane limps to the rock pile. "If not for Otis," he says, taking a stone from a wheelbarrow, and his voice is odd, "I'd have never made it out alive. And that goes for Carl, too. It was _Otis._ He saved us both." He looks straight at Patricia, and now his eyes are watery, too. "If any death ever had meaning, it was his."

He places the stone on top of the marker.

Shane's a good guy, I think.


	13. Cracking Down

**A.N.: Before reading this, you might want to read the second chapter of "Little Bit" if you haven't. Or not. Either way, please enjoy the following.**

**. . . . .**

I want to see Carl, but I don't want to ask to. None of the others have asked to see him, and Rick and Lori haven't offered, so I think maybe Carl's not ready. So I shove the idea from my mind, making myself be content with the fact that he's alright for now. Alive. And so I just take the time to take in the farm.

We moved all of our cars and the motorcycle out to a patch of trees, in front of the house but still a good distance away. Tents are being set up, and I try to help, I do, but I'm pretty small, and I'm distracted. Because this farm, this farm we've found ourselves in the middle of, it's _normal. _Remember what I said about cattle? And Maggie – Glenn told me that was her name – she was riding a horse, and so there has to be at least that one around here somewhere, and likely more.

Horses. Cattle. A house.

_Normal._

Then there's also the fact that some of the adults – my dad, Rick, Shane, Andrea, and Maggie and Hershel – have been looking at a map for the past few minutes over by the Cherokee. I've heard Sophia's name. They must be talking about looking for her. I want to know what the plan is.

Right now, though, at this second, I hear a neigh. I step away from the tent Lori and Glenn are propping up and listen, close, and I hear it again. Where? My eyes trace the range of grass that runs from here to the house, reaching out and touching one barn way over to my left and one that's closer, over to my right. I have hunter's eyes, but I have hunter's ears, too, and after the third neigh I know those hunter's ears are telling me I need to aim for the barn on the right. "Lori?" I turn, meet her eyes, and point. "Can I go look over there? At that barn?"

"That's the stable." That's not Lori, though. That's the blonde girl, Hershel's younger daughter and Maggie's sister . . . What's her name? She smiles at me, and she looks a little shy. "We got lotsa horses. She can go look at 'em, it's fine." She says that last part to Lori, whose eyes go over to the stable and then over her shoulder, at the Cherokee, where my dad's still with the others, still looking over that map.

"Alright," she soon says, "But just a quick peek inside."

I grin and run. It's been a while since I've run just because, just because I wanted to, because it's fun and I'm fast, fast, fast. My legs are powerful and they hit the grass with soft, rapid thuds, and my hair flies back, and the sun washes over me and for a little while I'm untouchable.

The stable is made of old wood, but it looks strong. I step through the wide open doors and into a long walkway. On either side of this walkway are stalls, the kind with the half-door that lets the horses peer over. And to my left, in only the second stall down, a gorgeous brown horse has its head poked out and pointed straight at me.

I love horses. I walk over to this one, slowly, and offer it my palm, the way I know you're supposed to. "Hey, buddy," I murmur. The horse lowers its head down and breathes onto my fingers, and it tickles, and I know he likes me. I take my hand and run it down his muzzle, which is really soft. "What's your name?"

"Hey!"

I jerk my hand away and the horse backs off. My dad's standing in the doorway, crossbow on his back. And he's glaring. "What're you doin' runnin' off like that?"

What? I lower my hand. "Dad, I just wanted to see the horses. I told Lori where I was goin', I asked and everything."

"It ain't Lori you need to ask, it's me." He nears, and he looks like he did last night. Which basically means mad. But why?

"You were busy," I say, facing him, backing up against the stall door as he comes to a stop right in front of me.

"And you couldn'ta waited till I wasn't?"

I stare up at him. "I'm sorry." My voice is strained, because I'm very confused and maybe a little hurt.

I don't know if my dad picks up on that or what, but he pauses for a minute. He looks outside, readjusts his crossbow, works his jaw, and his voice is closer to normal – but not exactly there – when he speaks again. "I gotta go look for the girl."

Sophia. I straighten, pushing aside what just happened, at least for now. "I wanna go."

"No."

"But –"

"I said _no_, Sydney."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I _said so._ Now you get to the RV. I want you to stay there till I get back."

But the horses! And the cattle, and the house, and _everything_ . . . There's so much I need to see! "That girl Maggie, though, she said this morning that the whole farm was safe, and I can stay where the others can hear me –"

"You're gonna stay where they can _see_ ya! At the RV!"

And he's half-yelling. Not even close to his normal voice now. I press against the stall door again, my mouth open, and I don't understand, I don't understand.

"After that stunt of yours last night, you can see how I ain't really comfortable with leavin' you unsupervised!"

I just keep looking at him for a minute. A horse nickers, a breeze rolls through the place and makes straw scrape across the floor. I think back to last night, when he didn't whip me, and to this morning, when he told me he loved me, almost right after I woke up, just out of the blue. And looking at him now, with him acting so different, so mean, I can't help it, I talk again. "I thought you weren't mad anymore."

My voice cracks when I say this, and it's only a tiny bit, but I know my dad must have heard it. I don't let myself break away from his eyes, even though I really want to, but it's okay, because those eyes are changing up. They're not as harsh anymore. And he sighs. "It ain't about bein' mad," he mutters. "It's 'bout you bein' safe."

"Maggie said –"

"I don't care what she said, girl, 'cause it's also about you learnin' to stay where I put ya. Seems you need some practice with that."

And I don't know what to say. Anything I could say, what I _want_ to say, would just get me into bad trouble. And so I literally bite my tongue and keep on looking at Dad, and now I'm hurt _and _angry, because this ain't fair. He didn't give me any sign this would happen.

He tilts his head outside. "Now go. And you'd best behave."

That feels like the final hit in a fight. A fight I didn't see coming, not even a little.


	14. Long Day

Before Buck got ran over, we used to take him hunting sometimes. Most of the time, actually, especially once Dad got him trained at treeing squirrels. But when we were hunting bigger game, we'd leave him behind at camp, tied to a tree. He looked so sad watching us go, and I always thought it must be the most boring, miserable thing in the world to be left like that.

I was right.

I am Buck and the RV is my tree, the tree I soon learn to hate. I float around it, in and out, as the day goes on, slow, slow, slow. I'm never alone but who I'm with switches around. First a lot of people are there, nearly half the group, but then Dale and T-Dog come and say there's a walker in one of the farm's wells, the one we're supposed to be getting water from. I want to go see, I want to go see _so bad_, but of course I can't. And so I watch everyone but Carol head for the well, and I'm fairly sure I wear the exact same face that Buck used to wear when we left him at camp, big sad eyes and all.

Sitting under a tree outside, I do problems from an English book – easy but boring – as Carol works inside the RV. She's cleaning it, she says. For Sophia. And thinking about Sophia makes me think about Carl, lying in bed inside Hershel's house, and I want to visit him. A lot. I want to see him alive so I can erase all of my bloodstained imaginings from my head.

But I can't. I'm tied to a tree.

And I won't lie. As the sun creeps lower and I know it's late afternoon, and I've been hanging around the RV for three hours or so, I begin seriously considering disobeying my dad. Going to see Carl, or going back to the horses, or going over to the well in the distance to watch the grownups do whatever they're doing with the walker. But I don't do that, any of it. I can't bring myself to, and it's not just because I know my dad would wear me out. It's just . . . I don't want him to be mad anymore. I want the dad who rubs my neck and lets me ride the motorcycle and plays poker with me and fixes my knee and takes me hunting. My best friend. Not the one who was in the stable with me earlier. And so I make myself stay at the RV so I can get him back.

Dale and Lori and Shane and Andrea and T-Dog come back from the well. I ask what happened, of course, and it's crazy. They got a rope around the walker's neck so they could pull it up and kill it on land – didn't want to get its brains in the water – but while they were pulling the walker _ripped in half _and most of its inside went pouring into the well, and so now the well's just sealed off. Walker's dead, though, T-Dog killed it.

Glenn's not here, he and that girl Maggie are making a run into a town close by, for medicine. Shane and Andrea soon take Carol to check the highway for Sophia, because we're going to go back there every day until we find her. Dale and T-Dog go to get water from a different well, and I'm left with Lori. I do math problems and she brushes out my hair.

Amy was the last person who brushed my hair for me.

Before long Dale and T-Dog come back with some cartons of water that we store away, and then Dale goes up to the RV's roof to keep watch, and so I dump my math book to climb up there after him, because just about anything's better than working with numbers.

Dale and I are quiet for a few minutes. He stands, holding his rifle, and I sit on the roof with my legs stretched out, scoping the place. The farm's pretty from up here, and it's even bigger than I thought, but my eyes keep sliding back to the patch of woods my dad disappeared into this morning.

Dale seems to read my thoughts, or maybe he just catches me looking. Dale's smart. "You're not worried about your dad, are ya?"

I quickly shake my head. "No. He knows what he's doing . . . I just wish he'd hurry and get back."

Dale nods. "Well, he will."

"Yeah. He's been lost in the woods before, for a really long time. Nine days, he said. Back when he was younger'n me. I heard him tell Andrea about it last night."

"Ah. After you slipped out, right under my nose."

I feel a blush on my already hot cheeks. I didn't think much about Dale's place in the whole thing. I look at his feet and then glance at his face. "Sorry 'bout that."

But he's not mad. He's smiling a little, actually. "No, no offense taken. Kind of impressive, actually, just between you and me."

That makes me grin. It _was_ pretty clever of me, after all, sneaking under the cars like that.

"I just hope you won't do anything like it again . . ." He gazes off, his brow coming together under the brim of his fisherman's hat. "It's dangerous out there."

"Yeah. And my dad got mad."

"You get in trouble?"

"Not bad. And he says he's not mad at me anymore . . ." And can I tell Dale this? I side-glance at him, this old man with a rifle who smiles a lot and, best of all, reminds me of Papaw, and I decide I can trust him. "But I'm not sure. He snapped at me at the stable earlier, when I went to look at the horses. And he said I had to stay with the RV all day . . ." I wiggle my right fingers with my left hand until I feel and hear the familiar _snap_ _snap snap. _"It _seems_ like he's mad at me."

"Hm." Dale taps his fingers on the rifle. "Well, Sydney, I'm not a father, but . . . if I had to say, I would think that what your dad's feeling isn't anger so much as fear. Of you getting hurt."

I remember what my dad said this morning, about how making me stay at the RV was more about me being safe than him being mad. But I don't tell Dale this. I just shrug. "Maybe." I look out at the woods and yet again see no sign of my dad. "I still wish he wouldn't act mad."

Dale doesn't say anything for a while. Neither of us does. Then, finally, he starts up again with, "Sydney, if you don't mind me asking – and it's perfectly alright if you do – weren't your parents divorced?"

I don't mind him asking, except I don't like thinking about Mom much. But this is a normal question, like the kind I got asked even before the walkers came, so I just pretend it's back then again. "Yeah. Ever since I was real little."

"And you lived mainly with your mother?"

The smell of flowers and flavored coffee and makeup touches on my mind, teasing me, so I can almost smell it but not quite, not quite. My mother's house, my mother's room, where I would bounce on the bed while she finished getting ready in the mornings. "Yeah . . . I saw my dad every other weekend. And my uncle, usually."

"Okay." Dale nods. "So your dad isn't used to having you all the time, is he?"

"I guess not."

"And I bet on your weekends with him, it was mostly about having fun. Goin' huntin', maybe?"

I think about it. Yes, mostly hunting, of course, and that _was_ always fun. I'd get into trouble sometimes, but my dad didn't get mad often, not bad, not like he did last night or even this morning. "Yeah . . ."

"Well," Dale says, "My guess – and it's just that, a guess – would be that your dad's not quite used to this full-time parenting thing. Especially not with the world the way it is."

"What do you mean?" I sound like Mom when I say that, I think.

"It just must be a big adjustment for him. For the both of you. To go from seeing one another a couple of times a month to seeing each other every day."

I'm not sure I like where he's going with this. "It's good, though. I like seeing him every day. And I think he likes seeing me, too."

"Oh, of course, of course, I'm not saying he doesn't. I'm sure he loves that you're with him. But I think maybe, now that –" His voice softens here – "now that he's your only parent, he feels more pressure to do everything right. And he desperately, desperately wants to protect you." He pauses. "Do you think that has anything to do with it?"

I pull my leg into me and play with my shoelace. Honestly, I think I know Dale's right. I know my dad and me, _just _my dad and me, not my dad and me and Mom and Merle and Nana and Papaw, is something neither of us are entirely used to. And I definitely know he wants to protect me.

But I still don't get why he has to get mad.

I decide to go do math some more.

. . . . .

"_Daryl, it's better this way. Take her, now, and you get her the hell out of here."_

_ "Leah –"_

_ "Daryl, please, more and more of them are out there – you gotta go –"_

_ I cling to her, my mom, my mom, my mama, I hold her tightly, and tears are pouring down my face and I feel like I'm choking, and she's talking to my dad, and they're yelling, and then Mom flat-out screams, and Dad flat-out screams, I can't tell what, not over my sobs, and then I'm being yanked from her, from my mother, and I kick and thrash as I rise from the ground but the strong arms around me don't seem to be bothered by it._

_ "Let's go, Daryl!" Merle calls as he hauls me down the hall from my room. From my mom. _

_ "No! Mom! Mama! __Mama!"_

_ I hit my uncle, I pound on his back and flail and do everything I can to hurt him, but he doesn't slow, not a bit, and then we're out the door and I can't deal with it anymore and I just cling to him and gasp for air as the moans and growls sound around me and Merle's pistol goes off again and again, and then we're in Dad's truck, and I start fighting again, and Merle wraps one arm around me and that's all he needs to keep me still, but I still work hard to get loose, and I scream and scream and scream, because my mom, my mom! _

_ The truck's door opens and Merle's arm disappears and he's gone and my dad's here, and there are more gunshots, and then the sound of Merle's motorcycle, but I don't look, I don't care, I try to dive over my dad as he turns on the engine. I yell for my mother. "We can't leave her! Dad – Daddy – we can't leave her –"_

_ His arm comes around my upper chest and pins me down beside him, and the truck moves, and I claw at him and yell and yell until I can't yell anymore and I just cry, I cry, and I call Mom, and the truck keeps on moving, and I beg Dad, I beg him, and he doesn't answer, and my mother, my mother – _

_ I'm being shaken._

_. . . . ._

"Sydney? Honey?"

My eyes flash open and I stare back at Carol. When did she get back? I'm under a tree. The RV's right behind her. A math book's at my side. Dale's on top of the RV, keeping watch. The sun tells me it's an hour or so from evening.

This is now. This is what's happening right now, this is all that matters.

My tongue's dry. Carol's hand slips from my own and she examines me, and she's worried, I know, because all mothers have the same sort of worried look.

Oh, Mom . . .

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah." I grab my math book. It slips from my hand and I grab it again. Numbers don't sound so bad right now. Distraction, distraction.

"Sounded like you were having a pretty bad nightmare."

"I'm okay."

Oh, but my voice, my voice doesn't sound convincing. Not even a little. It shakes, and it's thin, and I hate it. I stare at the book. The numbers don't make sense, not a tiny bit, not even as much as they usually do. "Is my dad back yet?"

"No." Anxiety in her voice. Different this time. Of course. For her own daughter, not for me. But then she settles down beside me. I want to move away, I don't want this stranger with me, not now, I want my dad or my mom or my uncle or I want to be alone. But I stay put. My mom wouldn't want me to be rude.

"Your daddy had a dream about your mom this morning."

I look at her through my eyelashes. "How do you know?"

"I asked and he told me."

I don't say anything.

"I think he misses her, too."

I still don't say anything.

"You could talk to him about it. I think he'd probably like to hear."

She doesn't know my dad. She doesn't see the way his lips tighten, how his eyes get distant, whenever I bring up my mom. Anyone could tell he doesn't like to talk about her.

I think it becomes clear to Carol that I don't plan on making much conversation. I hear her sigh. She stands. "Okay," she says, so softly, so quietly, that I think I may have just imagined it. She walks back into the RV and I'm left with a math book I don't want and scenes that I want even less playing inside of my head.

I need to be alone and I can't be. Or I need my dad.

He should go ahead and get back. He can be mad all he wants, as long as he has his arm around me while he's at it.

. . . . .

Thirty minutes later, I'm in the process of discovering that I can't throw this new knife, not nearly as good as I could my old one, when Dale calls my name. I pull my knife from a patch of grass and look up to see him pointing. "I think there's someone here you might want to see."

That's almost exactly what my mom used to say, back when my dad would come to pick me up. I stuff the knife back into its sheath and run around the RV, and I see Dad coming from the woods, across the field and over to us.

I want to run to him but it's a long way, and anyway, he hasn't been gone all that long, really, even though it feels like it, so I shouldn't want to run like that. Instead I stand and wait, fidgeting, until he's close, and then I jog – that's different than running – I jog over to him.

"Hey, babe," he says through the blade of grass he's chewing on, and he rests one hand on my head. In his other he holds a bottle, an old bottle that looks like it might have been for beer, and in this bottle is a yellow-and-white flower.

"What's that?"

"Your old man's second-favorite rose."

I smile. He's said that before, and now I remember. "Cherokee?"

"Never forget a thing, do ya?"

And I smile wider, but then I realize something and the smile fades. "You didn't find her."

"Still plentya places to look. She'll turn up."

I raise my knuckle to my mouth but catch myself and just bite on my lip instead. We stop at the edge of the RV. He leans on it and I do the same, and I think the corner of his mouth tilts up, just a little. He takes the blade of grass from his teeth and lets it fall to the ground. "You stay put all day?"

I nod. "They pulled a walker from the well and I didn't even go see that."

"They pulled a walker from the well?"

"It tore in half and they had to seal the water off."

He takes this in stride, I guess because things like that just happen these days. "Well, you go on bein' a good girl, I may just decide to keep you after all." He brushes some hair from in front of my eyes, tucking it behind my ear. "Hey. You give me a minute to talk to Carol, and then how 'bout we go down and see them horses?"

If it got me away from here, I'd do just about anything. But this is the best option and I grin. "'Kay."

"'Kay."

And as he walks away he squeezes my shoulder once. Everything's fine.

I've even almost forgotten about that dream. Except that it's not just a dream and so I never will.


	15. I Don't Care

"Sydney, I ain't gonna fight you over it."

My dad sounds tired, but I can't let that get to me. Merle used to go on about standing your ground, and that's exactly what I do with Dad right now, I stand my ground, right here in the stable. Not breaking eye contact when I can help it, working hard to keep my voice level, because that's the mature thing to do. "I just don't see why –"

"'Cause I said so. Somethin' you need to figure out? That's a plenty good enough reason." He takes a bridle down from the wall across the horse that I guess he's picked, a brown mare we spent some time by last night, when we came down here just to look at the horses. Things were good between us then. Now they're not. And you know what? I'm really getting sick of things between us switching from good to not and back and back again. But _he_ brought this on this morning, not me. It's on him, it's on him because he told me to stay here while he rides out looking for Sophia. After I was so good yesterday and everything.

"I just wanna know why you won't let me come," I say steadily.

"Ain't none of your concern." He looks down one way and then the other before moving past me, to the main door. "Where the hell're the saddles in this place?"

I talk to his back. That's easier than his face, anyway. "It is _too_ my concern. It's about me. And it ain't fair."

"Quit arguin'."

"No!"

Oops.

He stops, a dark shadow against the morning. He turns around and takes a slow step closer. "'Scuse me?"

I swallow. I didn't mean to say that the way I did. Or even say it at all. "I wanna help find Sophia."

He points at me. It's never a good sign when he points at me. "I'ma tell you this one more time, and then we're gonna drop it. You ain't goin'. End of discussion."

My arms decide to cross. My jaw gets so tight it hurts, and I feel a flash of what I now remember feeling right when I barked out _No!_, but I can't smother it in time, it makes me spit out, "You gonna make me to stay by the RV again?"

"You keep talkin' to me like that, I might."

We stare at each other for a long moment before he says, over his shoulder because he's heading back towards outside, "You don't gotta hang out at the RV, but you stay with one of the grownups. Help Lori and Carol make that dinner or somethin'."

He's talking about the dinner they're making for Hershel and his people tonight, the thank-you dinner.

I don't think much about what I say next, except that I want to mutter it. My mouth, though, it just doesn't agree with my head, so my voice is loud. "Yeah, that's much better'n stayin' with you and actually doin' somethin' useful."

Bam. Surprised even myself with that one.

Dad, too.

His long, fast strides get him back to me in one second and he has my chin in his hand the next. He makes me look straight up at him. "Backtalk me one more time," he says after a moment. "See what happens."

I'm silent. I want to pull away but his grip is tight. When he finally does let me go, I force myself to keep glaring as I say – I have to talk again, because I'm brave – "I just wish you'd tell me _why _I can't come."

"You want me to tell you? Fine! I'm supposed to be out there lookin' for somebody else's lost little girl, and I really ain't up for throwin' mine into the mix, too! And I ain't gonna find her if I'm too busy watchin' out for you the whole damn day!"

It's quiet then. Even the horses don't make a sound. My dad, whose hands tend to move when he talks while angry, lets his arms fall back to his sides.

Me, I'm numb. I've gone numb, I've gone into shock, I don't feel like myself, I feel like I'm outside this strange girl's body, and then the numbness fizzles away like bubbles in soda and I'm back inside of me and a hurting feeling starts to bloom in my stomach.

By then my dad's wiping his forehead. "Little Bit –"

"I'll just go help make dinner, then. Stay outta your way."

"Hey –"

But I'm already running, running right past him, and his hand snags my wrist for a moment but I slip it out just as fast and I'm gone, out the door and into too-fresh air and sunlight that'll just burn my skin. Dad doesn't come after me. I don't know why and I don't care. I don't care. Let him go look for Sophia. Let him go and be completely unbothered by his own stupid, helpless little girl. _I don't care!_

But that doesn't explain why my insides start to hurt because my legs are trying to run, my lungs are trying to breathe, and my throat's trying to sob and those three things just don't work well together.

. . . . .

I go to the RV because I don't know where else to go, since I have to be with grownups and all, and I just reach the thing and pray no one's inside. I think I hear Dale call to me from up top, or maybe not, I don't know, but either way I say nothing and just pound up and slam the door behind me and go through the newly-cleaned space and thank God that it's empty and head into the back room and there I throw myself onto the bed on the left and I cross my arms and hide my face and grit my teeth and cry. Before the walkers, I almost never cried. Ever. Now I cry every other damn day and I hate it, I hate it, it's not fair, none of this is fair.

. . . . .

I come out of the RV around twenty minutes later, once I've checked myself in the mirror and I'm certain that I don't look like I've been crying anymore. I scan all in front of me and no one's there. _My dad's_ not there. He'll be gone by now, riding off on that horse. It doesn't matter, I don't care that he's gone, that he didn't come find me, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care about any of it. I jump past the RV's steps and point myself towards the house, clenching and unclenching my fists, determination like steel in my chest.

"Sydney?"

The voice comes from the sky. I turn and look up at Dale, which I can hardly do, with the sun as bright as it is today. "You okay?" he calls.

So he could tell I was crying, then. Or at least he could tell I was upset. "I'm fine!" I say back, sounding maybe a little too happy, but it's better than sounding bad. "I'm gonna go help Lori and Carol make dinner."

That's not a lie, because I will. At some point.

"Alright. You can always come up here if you want."

I smile and nod and turn away and walk. Towards the house.

But not to help with dinner.

Because my dad told me I couldn't go with him. He all but told me I couldn't handle myself. He told me to stay here and to stay with a grownup because I'm so weak. And it's _not fair_.

So what am I gonna do? I'm gonna go spend some time with the only other non-grownup on the place. Dad can't get angry, because I'll be in the house and no place could be safer, but I'm still _technically_ disobeying him. Disobeying him and getting away with it.

That shouldn't give me a little thrill. But it does.

. . . And it means I finally get to see Carl.


	16. Something on the Ground

Carl. Pale, sleeping Carl. He looks small, lying in the center of the full-sized bed, his head pressed against a huge pillow. Different from that boy who may have been smiling over his shoulder at me, the last time I saw him before he went and got shot.

I lower myself slowly into the chair beside the bed, beside Carl, and don't take my eyes off of him as I ask, "He's really better?" Because he doesn't look all that great.

But Lori nods from her place by the door, eyes on her son. "Yeah. Yeah, he is. Hershel says he can get out of bed tomorrow."

There's still a tremble in her voice, though. I grind my teeth. I can't _not_ say it, even if it is outside of my comfort zone. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry . . . this happened."

She's surprised for a minute, I can see. Don't blame her. That comfort zone, it often keeps me from saying things like that. But a smile comes to Lori's face and she nods once and says, "Thank you, sweetheart," and I'm glad I said it, but I'm still a little embarrassed. I look down.

Lori clears her throat. "Uh, you can stay in here as long as you like. Just . . . let him rest. If he wakes up, try not to keep him talking for too long."

"Okay."

She glances at Carl one more time and then leaves, keeping the door open a crack behind her. I can hear her footsteps and then her voice, blending with all the other voices and the clanging of pots and the clinking sound of knives and forks and spoons. Then I just sit for a while, here in this nice room, lit by the sun coming through a window and filled with the smell of home cooking. I just stay with Carl and I enjoy it.

Finally, though, I have to talk. The words grow inside of me and tumble off my tongue. "I'm glad you're gonna be okay."

His eyes move underneath his eyelids, but otherwise he doesn't stir, so I continue.

"I mean, I's a little worried, when I first heard it. Maggie – that's one of Hershel's daughters, I don't know if you know – she just . . . rode on up to us, right in the middle of the woods, on our way back from looking for Sophia, but instead of saying you were okay she said you were _still alive_. So I thought . . ." I tangle my fingers all up with each other and watch them wiggle around. "I was afraid you wouldn't . . . But I don't know . . . Guess you must be pretty tough."

"Thanks."

I jerk my head up and he's looking at me. His eyes are alert, more alert than I would expect from someone who just woke up. Especially someone who took a bullet a couple of days ago.

"Thought you were asleep," I mutter, my eyes falling back to my hands, and I feel embarrassed again.

"You really think I'm tough?" His voice sounds a little weak, but that might just be from sleep.

I shrug and glance at him without moving my head. He's staring, and his eyes – they're blue – are narrowed. Like he's trying to work something out. "But I thought . . ."

Just the sounds of the women in the kitchen for a while.

". . . I thought you thought I wasn't."

I fidget. I thought a lot of things.

He pushes himself up into a sitting position. He won't stop looking at me, I can sense his eyes even with my head down, and he's talking again. "Like . . . Just, with all of the things that have happened since you joined up with us – that walker in the woods, remember? The one eating the deer that your dad shot? You were the last one to run from it."

"I still ran."

"Only because the rest of us did."

He's wrong. I ran because my dad's voice was telling me to run. But Carl's not done. "That was the first time I realized how . . ." he stops, eyes darting around, looking for words. "It was just cool. And . . . at the CDC, when Jenner locked us in. You weren't scared. Not even a little. At least not that I could tell."

I feel a stab in my chest. Carl doesn't know the story behind that. How I was standing there thinking about my mother in heaven and how I wanted to see her again. And he'll never know, because I was so out of it then, it shouldn't even count. So I take a different direction to talk him off of this, and I have to talk him off of this, because I don't like it, I don't like him thinking all these things about me that aren't true. Even if they are good. I don't deserve this kind of praise. "What about that night at the CDC? When you found me –"

I don't want to finish that sentence, but I don't have to, anyway. He knows, I know he knows what I'm talking about. I know he remembers how he found me crying on a stairway after I got into an argument with my dad. How he tried to be nice and I shot him down, practically throwing a fit.

"You mean the stairs?" He shakes his head. "Sydney . . . I've seen you cry twice since I met you. That time and . . . the fish fry. How many times have you seen me cry?"

A lot. But . . . "It doesn't matter." It's not about what you see. It's about what's real. And what's real is that I was sobbing away in the RV right before I came here, and I've cried hidden away more times than I would ever admit, to anyone. "Look, do you got a point?"

Carl doesn't flinch at my attitude. Maybe he's getting used to it. "Just that . . . I don't know. I just didn't think _you_ would ever think I was tough."

I let out a long sigh, biting my knuckle while I'm at it, because what the hell? It's quiet in here, quiet and awkward, until finally I say, "You crawled up on that body back at the highway and yanked out all those weapons. And you stayed with Rick and Shane to help look for Sophia. And you got shot and lived. Me, I'm tough, I know that. But man, you sure ain't weak, either."

And we look at each other. He smiles first, this half-smile that makes him look older. And I smile back, and I don't even have to tell myself to. It just happens.

Then I've done all I can do. Given all I've got in me. My comfort zone is so far away I'll need a compass to get back.

"Your mom said I shouldn't bother you too long . . ." I stand, swiping my hands over my jean legs. "You . . . I mean, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Bye, Sydney."

And so I walk to the door, letting out a long breath as I do so, and then I hear, "Hey," and I turn back around and look at him again.

"Thanks for visiting me."

Those words, that simple dose of gratitude, brings down a crushing shame all over me. Because, even if I've wanted to see Carl all along, why did I actually make this visit? What got me to walk over here and ask Lori and sit down?

Me, wanting to get back at my dad. And that's so terrible and it's just now hitting me how, even if I like to think I'm tough – even if I _am_, and I can be – I'm not sure if that means much if I'm a bad person.

But these thoughts stay carefully tucked away inside of my head. And I just nod at Carl, this nice kid who talks as if I'm better than he is, and he's wrong, he's so wrong.

. . . . .

The rest of the day goes by fast after I see Carl. True to what I told Dale, I stay in the house to help with dinner, which Carol and Lori are making into a big, fancy meal with lots of courses and choices. I do the odd jobs they trust me with, and I'm capable of doing more, but I don't say so, because I'd rather them not know that I actually know enough about housework to get it done on a regular basis. I prefer outside to indoors, a hunting knife to one made for chopping, and a squirrel I shot myself to a frozen slab of ham wrapped in plastic.

Still, I can admit that it's nice being in a kitchen. Well, maybe not nice. What's the word? Bittersweet, yes, bittersweet. Because every utensil I touch, every pot I'm told to stir, every measuring cup I'm given, reminds me of Mom. Where I hunted with Dad, I cooked with Mom. That was our thing. And even though Mom was focused on healthy eating, on cutting out bad carbs and reducing the sugar content of every dish she made, I can't even drop a chunk of butter into the green beans without seeing her face. And she had such a pretty face, Mom. And I'm happy it still comes to me so easily, and I'm happy I can still hear her voice just as it was, telling me to stir slower or scrape the bottom of the pan or whatever. I can still hear her laugh.

But it all hurts. And that's why it's bittersweet.

It's not just Mom I think about as the day goes on. I worry about Dad, worry about him getting back, worry about what happens if he still hasn't found Sophia, if none of the others find her today, either. And – and I know, I know this is selfish – I worry about if we'll talk about this morning. How he yelled and I ran. I don't think I want to talk about it.

Carol keeps tossing looks my way, too, little tight-lipped looks, and I bet she's still thinking about catching me having my nightmare yesterday. Dad didn't mention it last night, so I don't think she told him about it, but still. It's out there. And I wish she'd just forget it and stop giving me those looks, because nightmares are nightmares – whether they actually happened or not – and sometimes people just have them.

Hershel's people drift in and out of the kitchen and offer a welcome distraction. Mostly it's Patricia and Maggie and Beth, the blonde girl who told me about the stable. They talk to us, and they're nice. Patricia still looks sad even when she smiles, though. But that'll go away. Eventually.

I like them. And I like this kitchen and I like this place.

The hours keep passing by and I sweat over steaming half-prepared dishes and burn my fingers more than once, even though I'm at the oven and stove much less than Carol and Lori. The light from the windows darkens into orange, and Lori's just reported to Hershel that dinner will be ready in an hour when it happens.

_CRACK._

A gunshot. It invades the house and makes everyone and everything go still for the smallest second.

The plate I'm washing splashes into the murky sink water. My feet jump from their stool and fear sets in, because I really don't get good feelings from gunshots these days, and I head for the front door, fast, and I'm not alone, no, it's a stampede, pots being abandoned and spoons being dropped and feet moving, moving, and questions that no one knows the answers to are asked in panicked tones. Hershel's the first one outside but I'm not far behind.

We all race out, out away from the house and towards the RV, where I see Dale hanging on the ladder and Andrea slowly rising to a stand on the roof. There's a rifle in front of her, Andrea, there's a rifle in front of her, and Andrea shoots? Was she on watch?

_"Rick!_" Lori cries, and for some reason she and Hershel stop a ways back from the RV, all of them do, and I don't get that, that makes no sense, and so I keep going. Hershel yells, asking what on earth's going on, but no one answers, and I need to find out, I need to find out, and so I run up to Dale, and I'm breathing hard as he climbs down, fast, from the ladder. Andrea follows. "Oh my God . . . Oh my God . . ." she's muttering, her voice high, and something's really wrong.

"What?" I pant. "What happened? Is it a walker?" But no, why would Andrea be so spooked from shooting a walker?

But what else would she shoot?

Dale seems to just notice I'm there, and the way his eyes widen when he takes me in does not comfort me at all. No, it puts a very, very bad lump into my stomach.

"Oh my God . . ." Andrea reaches the ground. "Oh my God, Daryl –"

The world around me locks up. My body goes cold and my eyes freeze onto Andrea. "What?" someone far away but who sounds just like me asks.

But Andrea's already running. Running off into the field, over to the woods. Where a group of men are huddled around something on the ground. Something on the ground.

Thoughts muddle around in my spinning head and latch onto each other, creating a picture, suggesting something. It's the far-away me who speaks again. "My dad."

Dale says something and I can't understand it. I don't ask him to say it again. My legs, they go, they move, faster than ever, ever before, and oh, God, oh, God.

Dad. No. _No._

I chase after Andrea, chase her over to the group by the woods, and maybe someone yells after me, I don't know, my ears aren't working right, the only thing that's working right are my legs. And my eyes. My eyes, my eyes that don't leave the group of men as I get closer and closer, my eyes that see them haul up the dirty body I know so well, but not when it's like this, not when it's broken and limp and bloody like that, and my dad, my dad, my dad. My dad is dead. My dad is dead.

A scream that doesn't sound like me or any other person rips through my body and I'm torn apart.


	17. Miss Her

Merle grabs me and holds me back from my dad, my dad who's dead. Dead. I scream again and thrash, and damn him, damn you, damn you, Merle –

Merle says my name. No. That's not Merle. Papaw? Dale. It's Dale. He's the one holding me. I go stiff and he's talking. What is he saying? None of it makes sense, none of it, until my mind gets caught on the word "unconscious" and it winds down and lets me listen.

". . . Rick just said so. The bullet only grazed him, he's alright. He's alive."

"Daddy –"

"He's alive, Sydney, he's alive. It's okay."

Alive. Unconscious. Alive. Not dead. Not dead.

Things blend together for a while and I'm aware of moving and being led and T-Dog holding up a doll, Eliza's-and-now-Sophia's doll, and that doesn't make any sense and so I just look at my dad, my dad, being carried across the field, carried by Rick and Shane and escorted by Glenn and T-Dog and Andrea, Andrea, who won't shut up. Dad's feet drag. But he's alive. Just unconscious. Dale stays beside me and then we're on the porch, and there's more shouting, and it's mostly from me, and I see Andrea's teary face and I'm calling her a stupid bitch and then Dale's pulling me inside and then Dale's gone and I'm with Lori and she's hugging me and we're outside a door that Shane and Rick just took my dad through and Hershel goes in there and I hear talking but I can't understand any words or even recognize voices and I sit in a chair and I shake and Lori keeps telling me that my dad's alright and to let Hershel fix him up and I keep nodding and breathing and going from here to the field and to something on the ground and to the blood I saw on Dad and to him yelling in the stable and to him rubbing my neck and I hear the gunshot again, several times, _CRACK . . . CRACK . . . CRACK, _and each time I watch the plate splash into the water and I run out to see Andrea with that rifle and then it's out to the field again and something on the ground again and I need to see Dad now, I need to see him, but Lori holds my shoulders when I try to go to him and she tells me to wait, just a little while, just wait, and so I do but it all plays over in my head, all of it, all of it, all over again. And again. And again.

Rick and Shane come out. Rick tells me he'll be alright, Dad'll be alright, just wait a little longer while Hershel finishes stitching him up, and there's a lot of stitching, because my dad got hurt real bad before Andrea even shot him, and I don't hear how, those words slip away from me. Wait, wait, wait. He's alive, remember, he's alive. Shane and Rick go down the hall and argue and Lori goes too and then she comes back to me but I turn away because I don't want her anymore because she's not my mom or my dad or anyone who could possibly make this better right now. She leaves. I wait. I wait and wait and wait and wait and then Hershel appears and he lets out a big sigh and he says my dad wants to see me and so I go into the room.

My dad. My dad's in a bed. My dad's alive. His head's wrapped in a bandage. "'Bout time you showed up," he says. He sounds like himself. Like his normal self. I step to the edge of the mattress and stare for a minute, taking in his open eyes and the way his chest keeps rising and falling underneath the covers.

"You still mad at me?" he asks.

When was I mad at him? This morning, when I ran. That now seems like the most unimportant thing in the entire world and so I shake my head and that feels weird. My mouth tries to talk and it can't.

My dad gestures for me to climb up. I do. I crawl to him and hesitate, but he says, "C'mon, you ain't gonna hurt me," and so I lie down and put my ear against his bare chest and hear his heartbeat, strong and steady, and then I press my face into his neck and put an arm around him and he curls his around me and I feel safe in the way I thought I'd lost forever. He smells like medicine and my mouth starts to work again. "I thought you were dead."

My voice is back in _me_ – not in the far-away me from before – but it's gone high-pitched in that way I hate usually, only I don't care about that right now, not a bit. I care about the pulse I feel in Dad's neck.

"Shh, I'm just fine, baby girl." He strokes my hair.

"I called Andrea a bitch."

"Well, I'll let that slide this time. But you'd best watch your mouth, missy."

He doesn't mean it, though, he's not mad. I hold him tight and I don't let go for a long, long time. He just keeps stroking my hair, rubbing my back, and he's alive, he's alive.

. . . . .

As it gets dark outside, Dad tells me how his horse threw him down a bluff and into a river, how one of his arrows pierced through his side.

"All the way?"

"Had to pull it clean through me."

I try to imagine it and I can't, not quite. "Can I see?"

He nudges me up and pulls back the covers, showing me the bandage, a big white square just under his rib cage. I wince and he covers the wound again. "How bad did it hurt?"

"Wasn't nothin' I couldn't handle."

Which isn't an answer, but I take it to mean it hurt pretty bad. I rest my head on his shoulder. "But you found Sophia's doll?"

"Yep. There in the river."

"So you know where she is now?"

"Got a better idea."

The door opens. I twist my head around to see Carol, holding a tray of food. The dinner, right. Guess that's still happening. She looks us both over, Carol does, before she asks Dad how he's feeling.

"'Bout as good as I look," he answers. His regular voice is back, his special gentle voice gone. That's okay. I like that voice to be just between us.

"Brought you some dinner. You must be starving." Carol's eyes flicker to me as I sit up. "You can thank Sydney here for it. She helped cook."

Dad pulls on a strand of my hair. "She's good for a thing or two."

Carol sets the tray down on the bedside table. "Sydney, you gonna come join us?"

"I'ma stay up here."

"Nah, Little Bit, go eat," Dad says.

I turn to him, frowning. "I wanna stay with you."

"I ain't goin' nowhere. You come tell me goodnight after you have your dinner."

Tell him goodnight? "Can't I sleep in here with you?"

"No, you're too big for that. Want you to sleep in the RV."

I make a face. He nods at the door in response.

. . . . .

There's not much conversation at dinner and I try to eat fast, especially since Carl's in bed and Beth's the next closest in age and I don't know her enough to strike up a talk. But Lori asks for me to help with the dishes after, which costs me an extra half-hour. When I at last get back to Dad's room and I curl up beside him again – "Just for a minute. I won't fall asleep." – I'm tired and not prepared for what he says.

"Carol told me you had a nightmare yesterday."

His voice is strained and I hate Carol. And I don't reply, either.

"'Bout your mom?" he prods, so now I have to reply.

"Ain't a big deal."

"We can talk about it if you want."

"You don't like to talk about Mom," I blurt. It's true, after all.

He shifts. "Yeah, what makes you think that?"

"You _don't_."

"Ain't an answer."

"I just know."

"You readin' minds now, sweetheart?"

I sit up with a sigh, rubbing my eyes. Do we really have to go through this? Now? After today? "You don't . . . I mean, you almost never bring her up if you don't have to. If I'm not askin' bout her or . . ." I think back to the CDC, when Dad told me Mom would be mad – actually, he said _pissed as hell_ – at me for feeling okay about dying. " . . . or somethin'."

"Never much of an occasion to."

I think about being in the kitchen, when everything made me see Mom, _hear_ Mom, and I think about dreaming about leaving Mom behind, and I think about being unable to crack my fingers or say _ain't _without the memory of Mom telling me not to, and I know that my dad and my mom weren't married anymore, I know that, but still . . . but still . . .

I stare at Dad and softly ask, "Don't you ever think about her?"

He runs his hand down my arm, pausing to pick at one of the bumps on my skin. He swallows. "Baby girl," he says, "I think 'bout your mom all the time."

Something catches in my throat and I gulp it back. I nod, trying to look thoughtful, even though I already know what my next question will be. "Like when?"

"Thought you's just comin' in here to say goodnight?"

I huff out a breath and glare at him.

He chuckles then, which I don't expect. Maybe the head wound's getting to him. "Fine. I think about her when you look at me like that. You make a face just like she did."

I nod again. That's a start. "When else?"

"Lotsa times."

"See? I told you you don't like to talk about her."

"I think about her when you say somethin' like that 'cause you sound like a little lawyer."

"You ever think about her and it's got nothin' to do with me?"

"How ya mean?"

"Like . . . Do you ever see somethin' – somethin' 'sides me – that reminds you of her?"

He's quiet then. His arm rests on my knee and his thumb strokes across those bumps. "Nah, mostly just you."

"But not always?"

"Sydney Rose, I'm tired."

I crack my fingers. "Is it a secret?"

"Sydney."

"One more question."

"Fine."

"Do you miss her?"

He snorts. "I barely ever saw her. Just to trade you off."

He makes it sound so simple. Makes it sound like he and Mom didn't talk on the phone at some point almost every week, for some reason or another. Like he didn't keep that picture of Mom in his wallet, like he didn't almost kill her old boyfriend Shawn after he split her lip, like he didn't spend the odd evening smoking and drinking out on our patio with her after they thought I'd gone to sleep, or like he didn't try to put off leaving her behind for as long as he could. He makes it sound like those three nights, the nights I'm not supposed to know about, the nights he spent with Mom in her room – and those are only the nights from since I've been old enough to remember – he makes it sound like those nights just never happened.

He makes it sound like he's about to lie to me.

But then he looks me straight in the eye for a while and I know that's not going to happen. Finally, "Yeah, I miss her, Little Bit. Now I'm done playin' question-and-answer. You get to bed."


	18. Glenn's Announcement

The next day we go shooting. Not my dad and me, though that's what I would've preferred – he would've preferred it, too, I think, since he almost doesn't let me go because he's still on bed rest. But eventually he gives in, and I leave with nearly all of the rest of the group to a patch of land Shane and Andrea found a couple of days ago, a patch of land with an old wooden fence that has a hill behind it. Carl comes with us. He's walking around again and he looks like he always did, except maybe a little slower. And he's never shot a gun before, but he gets the hang of it fast.

Me, I shatter every target they put in front of me. Not always on the first try, because I'm a little rusty. But my shot's still better than Carl's and Shane tells me he's impressed. And even though my dad's not here, I think back to all the times he and Merle took me out to do this and it makes me happy. No, it makes me feel bittersweet.

I miss Merle.

When we get back to camp, I go to Dad's and my tent, which he moved himself back into this morning. He's told me he's going to be on his feet again tomorrow. He's ready to start looking for Sophia again, which is good – Andrea and Shane are going out to search an area no one's covered yet, but I know my dad does it better. Still, as I walk through the open flap of our tent and see him lying on his cot, I can't help thinking he looks a little too pale.

He lowers one of Dale's books when I come in. "How'd ya shoot, kid?"

I smile. "Bullseye after bullseye."

"Atta girl." He snaps the book shut and tosses it aside. "C'mere for a sec." His arms push him up on the cot, and he does his best not to let the pain show on his face, but a trace of a flinch still slips through. He's better by the time I sit beside him, but then he looks at me seriously and I worry we're about to talk about what happened at the stable.

But no. What he says is, "Did you know 'bout that gun Carl had this mornin'?"

He means the gun Carl stole from the RV. Shane caught him with it, and where my dad would have killed me on the spot, Carl barely got a slap on the wrist and then got to go shoot. But I'm past being jealous at Carl for things like that. And I shake my head at Dad now. "No. How'd you know about that?"

"Dale thought I should. Make sure you weren't gettin' any ideas of your own."

"Course not. I know better." I think back. "I ain't even talked to Carl this mornin', 'cept a little while we were shootin'."

"Why not?"

I shrug. "Nothin' to say."

Then he gives me one of those thinking looks that tell me he's worried, but I don't get why, and so I frown and ask, "What?"

But he shakes his head and grabs for his book again. "Nothin'. Why don't you go play or somethin'? No use in us both bein' cooped up here."

"I have to stay with a grownup?"

"Where they can see ya, yeah."

I say alright and head outside, though I can't shake that thinking look from my mind. And as I step out, Dad calls my name, and he's wearing pretty much the same look again when I turn. "Do somethin' with Carl," he says. "Be good for ya to spend some time with someone your own age."

And I'm confused. He sounds more like Mom than himself. But he tells me to go on, and so I do, trying to figure out exactly what's going through his mind. And I move into the heart of the camp and see Carl there, laughing with T-Dog about something, his dad's old cowboy-cop's hat on his head. I watch him for a minute, then a minute again. Then I turn, grab one of the peaches Glenn got from Maggie this morning, and climb up to the top of the RV. I spend most of the rest of my day there, talking with Dale or just sitting in silence with him, letting the sun seep into me and melt me away for a while.

I don't need people my own age.

. . . . .

One of the best things about being on this farm is the eggs. I love eggs. Mom did, too, though she mostly just ate the egg whites. The omelets she made with them, though? Delicious.

Of course, the eggs Carol heaps on my plate the next morning are whole, scrambled over a fire, but that's fine. I stab a piece with my fork, pop it into my mouth, and it's wonderful.

The day is maybe an hour old, and the entire group's up and around the fire. Even my dad, he's back on his feet, like he said he'd be. I asked earlier if the wound hurt and he said no, but I've already caught him wincing twice. Still, now, as he leans back in one of the fold-up chairs next to me and eats his own breakfast, he looks just fine. He's really tough.

I'm sitting on a little stump, and a ways to my left, so is Carl. He's with his parents. I can't help glancing at him now and again, and I feel a little bad about yesterday, but it's not like I openly snubbed him. Those few times he talked to me at the shooting range, I talked back.

I was short about it, though. And I'd avoided him that morning and I avoided him all afternoon.

I'm not sure why.

Maybe . . . maybe I'm a little nervous to talk to him again. Yeah, I can admit that. But who can blame me, after the talk we had when he was in bed? When he went on about how strong I am when _he's_ the one who's survived getting shot? When he thanked me for coming to see him even though my final push through the door was my need to get back at my dad for yelling at me?

Carl doesn't know me. Not the real me. And I'm not sure he should want to.

I feel sad now. I look at my dad and remind myself that he's okay, so everything's okay, and –

"Um . . . guys?"

Glenn. He's standing up. He's talking to all of us, I think. And . . . he sounds _off_.

He looks _off_, too. But he has our attention now. "So . . ."

His tone is worse than _off_. It's shaky. I lower my fork to my plate, hunger leaving me.

And Glenn, Glenn says, "The barn is full of walkers."

It's like he's hit pause. Silverware stops clanking against plates. Food is swallowed or halted mid-bite. Myself, I don't even breathe for a moment after Glenn tells us this. I just stare at him, waiting for him to take it back. To say he was joking. To say he misspoke or make me think I misheard.

But none of that happens.

And there are walkers in the barn.

I liked it here. Here was supposed to be safe.

But there are walkers in the barn.


	19. Fear in Wrong Places

I can hear the sounds when we get close. The moans and all. And they're so out of place, so wrong here, here on this beautiful farm that I felt might be a home. It was supposed to be. I let down my guard here and everything . . .

We all started down here right after Glenn told us, wading through the tall grass in silence. The barn is huge and made out of the same wood the stable is, and it may be even older than that other building. Shane's peering in through a crack in the panels right now. I stand next to my dad. Well, he's stepped in front of me a little, actually.

There's a snarling noise that's too familiar, and Shane moves back from the barn, rejoins the rest of us a few yards off. He goes straight to Rick. "You cannot tell me you're alright with this."

"No, I'm not," replies Rick as Shane huffs past him. "But we're guests here. This isn't our land."

"Oh, God – this is our _lives, _man!"

"Lower your voice!" says Glenn. And Shane _was_ yelling. But he wasn't wrong. I stare at the barn, watch the movement between the cracks, as Andrea says that we can't sweep this under the rug. She means we can't ignore it. And no, we can't, we can't, there are _walkers _in the _barn_ . . . T-Dog says this ain't right, and then Shane starts talking to Rick again. I have to listen. I have to ignore the walker sounds.

". . . either gotta go in there, we gotta make things right –"

Kill them.

"– or we just gotta go. Now, we have been talkin' 'bout Fort Benning for a long time –"

Rick holds up a hand. "We _can't. Go._"

Now Shane's frustrated. His mouth's all drawn together. "Why, Rick, why?"

But it's not Rick who answers. "Because my daughter's still out there," says Carol mildly, her arms folded in front of her like she's cradling a baby.

"Okay –" Shane raises his hands to his face and looks at Carol in a way I don't understand but I somehow find mean. He lets his hands fall. "Okay, I think it's time we all start to just . . . _consider _the other possibility."

When you shoot a gun that has a kick to it, your hands sometimes get this numb-and-tingly feeling after, especially if you shoot it a few times. That's what my whole body feels like after Shane says this. Because after Shane says this, it hits me and finally sinks all the way in that Sophia could be dead. Not just hurt or alone.

She could actually be dead.

She could actually be one of –

But Rick. Rick's talking. ". . . not leaving Sophia behind!"

Not leaving her behind. Not leaving her behind. I'm flooded with weird and new gratitude for Rick just as my dad steps away from me and my comfort zone's shattered. "I'm close to findin' this girl!" he says to Shane, moving around Carol. "I just found her damn doll two days ago!"

Shane makes a high-pitched laughing sound that I can't really call a laugh. "You found her doll, Daryl, that's what you did. You found _a doll._"

I liked Shane . . . Shane was nice to me . . .

Dad's yelling now. Least it's not at me. "Man, you don't know what the _hell _you're talking about!"

"I'm just saying what needs to be said here!" Shane shouts back as Rick puts an arm up between them, muttering _alright, alright._ It's not alright, none of this is. Shane goes on, "You get a good lead, it's in the first forty-eight hours – "

I steal a look at Carl, but he's watching Dad and Shane, his mouth open.

Shane's shouting, Rick's telling him to stop. But Shane talks around Rick, right to Dad. "Let me tell you somethin' else, man!"

Dad steps forward. His face isn't good. He looks all hunter.

"If she was alive out there, saw you comin' – all methed out with your buck knife and geek ears around your neck, _she would run in the other direction!"_

I don't have time to process the thing about geek ears, because Dad's trying to go at Shane, held off by Rick's arm. It's then a shouting match, with Rick in the middle, pushing the two men apart, and there's yelling from more than those two, yelling from others for them to stop it, cut it out, and then Glenn and Rick together manage to move my dad back and he steps away, glaring at Shane like he's ready to cut out his throat, and without really thinking about it I reach out and grab his hand before he can go after him again, but Dad, he shakes me off. For a second I feel the deep kind of ache that I think only he can really put into me, but then he looks down and sees me and presses his lips together and puts a hand on top of my head, so it's okay.

Shane's calm now, too. Or at least he's not coming for Dad anymore. When I turn my attention back to him, he's telling Lori to keep her hands off of him, which I don't get since I thought they were friends, and then he's stalking off and Rick's promising to talk to Hershel and figure everything out.

Shane screams, asking what Rick's going to figure out.

"If we're gonna stay," says Rick, and he sounds angry, too, "If we're gonna clear this barn, I have to talk him into it. This is his land!"

"Hershel sees those things in there as people." That's Dale. He's looking at Rick. "Sick people. His wife, his-his stepson!"

Sometimes, in my nightmares, I see people as walkers. People I care about or used to care about. Dad and Mom. Merle. My grandparents, my friend Tyler, my old teacher Mrs. Gladson. And everyone but Dad, I lost them. That was bad enough. But if they were walkers . . . And I remember feeling Dad's pulse when he was hurt. Listening to his heartbeat. If he became one of them . . .

I might put him in a barn.

Wait, wait. How does Dale know this?

Someone's asking him that right now. Dale says he found out yesterday and talked to Hershel about it.

"And you waited the night?" growls Shane.

Dale gives him a mad look that's strange on him. "I thought we could survive one more night! We did!" To Rick, he speaks softer. "I was waiting till this morning to say something, but Glenn wanted to be the one."

"This man is crazy, Rick." Shane.

I don't like him anymore.

"If Hershel thinks those things are alive or –"

Then there's the rattle of chains, the creak of wood, and the snarls get louder and meaner. The barn doors. Huge double-doors, closed with chains and a long plank of wood. They're shaking, these doors. They're being shoved from the other side. The walkers hear us and they want out. My dad puts his body in between me and the door and rubs my neck, but that doesn't fix anything, not really. Because the barn is full of walkers, and whether or not I can understand why Hershel would do this, _I_ didn't care about any of the people any of those walkers used to be. They'd kill my group, my dad and me, in a second, I know that, and I want this taken care of. One way or another.

. . . . .

"Dad, what's gonna happen?" I ask a few minutes later, when the group is back at camp and we've separated to our separate sections. Dad and I are just outside our tent.

"We leave or we go in there. Wipe out the walkers." He unzips the flap and holds it open for me.

I step through, greeted by unwelcome warmer air. "Well, yeah, but which one are we doing?"

He doesn't close the flap behind him. He steps to his cot and grabs his crossbow from beside it. "That's up to Rick. And Shane."

"Why not you?"

"'Cause I ain't the leader."

"Why not?"

He laughs a little. "Same reason I wasn't President of the United States. I just ain't meant to lead, Little Bit." He slings the crossbow over his shoulder and I catch the grimace cross over his face. I don't think he's right about that last thing he said, but that grimace, that's what I focus in on.

"Dad, you okay?"

"What? I'm fine. You be good while I'm gone, 'kay?" He combs his fingers through my hair as he steps back outside. I stare after him for a moment, then make a decision and follow. My voice automatically lowers, since we're surrounded by the others all scattered throughout camp.

"Dad," I whisper-call after him. "I don't think you should go."

He stops, faces me again. "What?"

I look around us to make sure the coast is clear, because I know he wouldn't want others to hear this. Then I point to his side. "I know it still hurts."

"Yeah, well. Got stabbed with an arrow."

I'm not good at this. "Hershel said –"

He steps closer. "Hershel don't know me," he says soothingly. It's hard to even try to argue with him when he talks like that. "I heal fast, Syd. I told you, I'm fine."

I bite my finger. He reaches down to stop me just as I remember, yank it out, and put it behind my back. He uses the hand to tap my head instead. "Now, you want me to find Sophia, right?"

I go back to the survivors' camp in Atlanta, the day after Rick got back, the day with the walker in the woods, the day my dad and Rick went to get Merle from the rooftop. My dad was leaving and I was trying to get him not to. The question he asked me then was if I wanted to leave my uncle to die. Now he's doing the same thing with Sophia, and I find myself mad at him, because this isn't right. He shouldn't ask me to choose.

But I don't say this. I'm not up for an argument, an argument that would just get me into trouble anyway. So all I do is nod. He nods back and moves away. "Gotta go saddle up. I'll be back 'fore dark." He pauses. "Don't tell no one I'm leavin'."

He doesn't walk through the camp to the stable, even though that would be the quickest way. He goes in the other direction, off to the barn, and I know he's going to circle around. Circle around so no one sees him going.

And between that and him telling me not to say anything, I know, I _know_ I can't let him do this. Not if it's so bad for him that he's trying to sneak away.

My first instinct is to go to Lori or Dale, but then Carol's face pops into my mind. My dad's going after her daughter, so it doesn't seem to make sense to ask her to stop him, but . . . if she wants him to not go, then I'll know for sure that his wound's really bad. Bad enough that I'm right in wanting him to stay.

So I go look for Carol.

. . . . .

I find Carol in the RV, mending a shirt. I tell her what's going on and she drops it. So I made the right choice. I did good.

But Dad won't think so.

Can't worry about that.

I take her to the stable. She goes right through the doors, but I hang back, half-hiding outside. I peer in enough, though, to see my dad heave a saddle onto a rack and clench his teeth in pain.

"You can't!" Carol says, and Dad looks up at her, surprised and immediately annoyed. Then his eyes find me. He stands straight and moves closer, past Carol.

"Thought I told you not to say nothin'?"

I shrink. "She was worried about you," Carol tells him.

My dad just shakes his head at me, then throws his arm out, pointing. "Get back to camp," he snaps. "I'll deal with you later."

_I'll deal with you later. _Never, ever good to hear. I run off, praying that Carol can keep Dad from riding out. And praying that I didn't just make a mistake.

. . . . .

We've got a picnic table set out by the RV now. After I leave the stable, I find Lori and Carl there, and even though I'm still fighting my inside-my-head back-and-forth battle about having a friendship with Carl, I sit down and do some math problems with him. It's not like that gets very personal, and it occupies my mind for the few minutes before my dad shows up.

It's weird that I don't see him coming, because the whole time at the picnic table I've been looking over my shoulder, hoping and not hoping for Dad to return to camp. But he somehow still manages to sneak up on me. One minute I'm doing division, the next I'm being yanked from my seat. He doesn't even say a word, he just starts tugging me over to our tent, and it's all I can do to keep up.

This is bad. I didn't think it would be this bad. He wasn't this angry when I left the stable, was he?

We reach our tent and the flap's still partly open. Dad lets me go but keeps his hand on my shoulder, and not in a gentle way. Once he's come in after me, he spins me around and the look he's giving me is all it takes to make me sit on my cot and want to shrivel up like a raisin.

_"What I been tellin' you 'bout mindin' me?" _

My tongue moves but words don't happen. I have them lined up in my head, I know what I should say – that I just didn't want him to hurt himself. That I couldn't let him do that. But the words just _don't happen._

I finally manage to choke out "Dad" and he interrupts me right off.

"No, I've had enough of this, Sydney. We ain't talkin' no more." And he makes a grab for my arm.

It's not something I plan. My dad moves so fast, I don't have time to plan. It's just how my body reacts. But fear spikes through me – so strange and misplaced and confusing – and my legs shove me back and I scramble across the cot, pressing my back against the tent. And I'm breathing hard and staring at him and I'm scared_, _I'm actually _scared_, why is he –

His face changes. Something inside of his eyes. His arm hangs in midair for a second, but then he drops it and takes a step back, and then he leaves the tent without another word.

I cover my mouth with both hands to try and drown out the whimpers. But there's nothing I can do about the tears, of course. I would have figured it out by now if there was.


	20. The Pond

Carl comes not long after Dad leaves. It's like the staircase at the CDC all over again but worse. Everything about it is worse, so much worse.

"Sydney?" he calls through the open flap, and my hands move from my mouth to my eyes, and I'm sure he must have heard my dad. Everyone probably did.

"Go away," I reply, which is the same thing I said at that staircase – a hundred years ago, before he got shot and Sophia got lost and I started fighting with Dad all the time – only now those words aren't so angry. I'm angered out. All I sound is pathetic, but I can't help that, not now. Hell, maybe this'll get across to him just how not-tough I am. "Please, Carl," I whine. "Please go away."

And he does and time passes and I cry and cry and then I just lie on my cot like a wrung-out rag. I'm so confused and I can only even feel that in a distant way, like I'm trying to understand something someone else is describing. I play back everything, from my dad getting his crossbow to him seeing me at the stable to him pulling me from the picnic table to him yelling at me to him reaching for me to him walking out. I remember moving away from his hand and I wish I hadn't done that, because that look in his eyes afterwards was bad in a way I don't understand. Why _did_ I move back? Why did I feel scared, when I've never, ever been afraid, flat-out afraid, of Dad? Why did I dodge him when tried to grab me? He's spanked me before. It hurts but it's nothing I can't handle.

But there was something so different about this. He was just _so _mad . . . and all I'd wanted to do was keep him safe, that's the only reason I told Carol . . .

I start crying again and have to think about something else. I think of Mom and I, that time we spent the night in the big suite at the fancy hotel, and we stayed up late and watched movies and she took me to the spa the next day and I let myself be girly once she swore not to tell Dad or Merle and I got a pedicure just like hers . . .

I don't know how long I'm in the tent for. I don't think I'm very good at keeping track of time without the sun or a clock. Maybe it's been an hour, maybe it's been two, when someone steps back through the tent and I can tell just by the footstep that it's _him_. I squeeze my eyes shut.

The cot dips down. Dad's sitting beside me. "You look at me?"

I don't want to, I don't want to. But I can't exactly say no. I roll over and face him, but I can only meet his eyes for a second before I have to let my gaze flicker away.

"You been cryin'?"

His voice isn't mad but I still can't look at him. And I shake my head. Too late I realize that my eyes will still be swollen.

"You lyin' now?"

I don't answer. I watch a dragonfly land on his pillow across the tent.

My dad, I can tell he nods, and I don't know why. Then he says, "You up for a walk?"

A walk? Why would we go for a walk? So he can wear me out away from camp? Guess that'd be better than here, where everyone'd hear and know. I get the feeling he's not really asking, anyway, so I sit up and slide off the bed and follow him outside without a word of protest, because my dad doesn't like it when I argue.

We don't talk and I keep my head down. We leave the same way he left this morning, meaning we don't have to go through camp, which I'm grateful for. We head away from the barn, though. I watch the grass and spy on the bugs and let Dad lead me along. We go through a field and around a small patch of woods, and then I sense some sort of change and I look up and there's a pond. A gorgeous pond, with blue-green water that reflects the thick fence of trees on the side opposite of us. High, tangled grasses and weeds stretch out in front of my dad and me, and on the shore is a dock holding a boat, and this is where my dad heads. I follow, unsure of what's happening and nervous, but almost unable to keep that anxious feeling up in a place so peaceful and pretty. I step where my dad steps, batting away the weeds that sometimes come all the way up to my shoulders.

We reach the dock and the wood creaks as my dad steps onto it. The dock is long and thin, and the boat resting on it is green and rusted over in places. Dad passes the boat, though, and I go after him, the wood not creaking so much under me, and I can't help but almost-smile, just a little, at the thought that this might be the only place we've ever been where I can keep my footsteps quieter than Dad's.

Dad, he reaches the end of the dock and gets down on his knees. He looks into the water, then over his shoulder at me. "C'mon." He straightens and digs into one of his pockets as I obey. Just as I reach him, he pulls out a little plastic bag full of some scrambled eggs from this morning. He picks out a little piece. "Look."

His fingers go out over the water and crumble the egg all up. The pieces fall and float around for a moment, then something silver flashes under the surface – a fish, maybe the size of my foot. It darts up and snags one of the crumbs with a little popping sound, and then it's gone, leaving just a ripple behind to prove it was ever there.

Another smile pulls at my lips, a bigger one this time. I lower down beside Dad. "That a perch?"

"Yep. Look. More comin'."

And yes, up come two other perch, then another, and within a few seconds all of the egg in the water is gone. I've never done this before, fed fish just for the sake of feeding them, not so they bite into hooks and become dinner.

Dad holds out the bag to me. "Go on, give it a try. Yeah, just a little piece . . ."

And so we lie down on our stomachs, the wood of the dock warm and wonderful, and drop little pieces of egg into the pond. We see perch more than anything else, but a couple of times a catfish swims up, sweeping away every crumb it can find and then vanishing, one time so fast that it splashes tiny water droplets at me. When we run out of egg, Dad shows me how I can stick the tip of my finger in and trick a fish into thinking it's food. A perch shoots up and takes a nibble, and it just feels like a tiny kiss but it still catches me off guard and I give off a little squeal, and Dad _shhs_ me but he's grinning when he does it.

Then I prop my arm on his back and rest on him. He's torn the sleeves from this shirt, like usual, and so I can see part of one of his tattoos. I trace my finger over it for a while before trailing off on a scar. He has a lot of scars on his back, from when he was a kid and fell out of a tree and got hurt really bad. And thinking about that makes me think about other things, and finally I have to talk.

"Dad . . ."

"Hm?"

I take a deep breath to calm the twinges in my stomach. "I's . . . I's gonna say I'm sorry for tellin' Carol you were goin'. But fact is, I ain't."

He's quiet. I stare at the back of his head, crossing my arms in between his shoulder blades, clinging to the happiness of the few minutes before this and hoping he does the same. "You could've hurt yourself. Worse, I mean. And I know you wanna find Sophia, and I want you to, but I don't want anything to happen to you, because I thought you were dead when Andrea shot you, and it was horrible, and I hate that I made you mad, but –"

"Hey. Stop." I move off of him as rolls over and sits up, holding the place where the arrow got him. "I know why you did it, Syd." He gazes out at the water for a second before turning his eyes on me. He doesn't have a mean look. Not at all. "And you weren't wrong. I was wrong."

I'm not entirely following.

He shakes his head. "I shouldn'ta been goin' out. And I sure as hell shouldn'ta got mad at you. Especially not . . ." He thinks for a minute, almost like he's forgotten I'm there. But then he reaches out and pins back some of the hair the breeze is trying to push across my face. "Babe, I know I got a temper. But you ain't ever gotta be afraida me. I'd never . . ." He trails off again and I see him swallow, and I wish I'd never moved away in the tent, and I wish I'd never been afraid, because that was just silly, it was silly.

"Dad, it's okay," I murmur, and I don't even know what I mean, but I just don't want him to look the way he looks right now.

Then he pulls me into him and kisses my head. Both of his arms wrap around me like a cocoon. "Yeah, okay."

I just let him hold me then. And there may be walkers in the barn, but right now I feel the best I've felt in a long time.

After a few seconds, "Well, looky there."

I glance up at Dad and then I look behind me, eyes all squinted because of the sun that never, ever lets up. I search the jungle of a shoreline and then I see it, what he must mean. A few spots of white that look like accidental drops of paint against all the green.

Cherokee Roses.

I watch the wind make them dance around. To Dad I say, softly, "Once you're better . . . You're gonna find Sophia, right?"

His arms tighten around me. "Course I am. Only a mattera time."

And then we leave the dock, but we're back soon, but this time we've brought Carol. Dad wanted to show her the roses, and he does, and then in a not-quite-like me moment of over-the-top happiness, I start chasing after a butterfly and leave them to talk like grownups do. I jump through the grass and chase after the thing, this little orange spot of color that's so beautiful and perfect here, and I know Dad's happy with me and I know he'll find Sophia and everything's _good_ right now, right here in this moment, so wonderfully good and I think maybe, maybe, in spite of the barn full of walkers and in spite of Mom and in spite of so much other stuff, it can stay that way. It can stay good, life can stay good.

Yes, I think maybe so.


	21. One More to Put Down

Dad calls me away from my butterfly hunt after a couple of minutes, and we walk back towards the camp, him and me and Carol. Only we don't go to the camp, because when we're close enough, we can see people on the porch and around the porch of the _house_, and so we go there instead. We reach the steps just a little after T-Dog and Andrea do, and I catch Andrea saying, I think to Glenn, ". . . off with Hershel. We were supposed to leave a couple hours ago."

My dad hears this, too. I know because he picks up his pace right away and says, "Yeah, you were. What the hell?"

"Rick told us he was goin' out," Carol says. Yes, Rick was going to look for Sophia. With Andrea. Why –

"Damn it – isn't anybody takin' this seriously?" Dad sort of shouts, and I don't think he thinks people _aren't, _not really, but I can tell he hates not being out there himself and for a moment I feel guilty but then I remember Dad told me I was right to tell Carol. Now Dad's swinging his arm out to the distance. "We got us a damn trail!"

He means because of the doll he found, the doll that tells us where Sophia's been. I scan the faces here. Maggie's standing by Glenn, watching my dad with a concerned expression, and up on the porch Carl and Beth and Patricia seem to be playing some sort of board game that I guess we've interrupted. Maybe I should –

"Ah. Here we go."

That was Dad and I turn to him, but he's walking towards a figure stalking up here now, loaded with a bag. Shane. He has a gun in his hand, a long gun . . . but I thought we weren't supposed to have guns here? And as Shane moves closer, I see the bag he's carrying is the gun bag itself. The gun bag Dale usually keeps in the RV . . . Has Hershel changed his mind?

Shane reaches Dad. "What's all this?" Dad asks, and in answer, Shane tosses the gun – it's a shotgun, I can see now – from one hand to the other and holds it out to my dad.

"You with me, man?"

With him? With him how? What are they going to do?

But Dad, Dad must know, because he says yeah, takes the gun, pumps it. Meanwhile Shane walks deeper into the group, announcing that it's time to grow up, asking Andrea if she already has her gun, and she does and I don't know why, and _where's Dale?_ Andrea asks, and Shane says he's on his way, which is good, because maybe things will start making a little more sense once Dale's here, things tend to do that. Dad, Dad follows Shane past me and touches my head on his way, but that's not any sort of explanation, and –

And it dawns on me. The guns, Shane's stony face.

The walkers. The walkers in the barn.

That's the only possible reason, that's the only thing that makes sense . . .

Shane's speaking, loudly, to all of us. "Look, it was one thing sittin' around here pickin' daisies when we thought this place was s'posed to be safe, but now we know it ain't!"

He's right, he's right, of course he's right, didn't I decide that just this morning? That I wanted these walkers gone? I glance at the barn, then the gun bag, and a sense of unease fills me but I drown it the same way I did back when Dad would take me fishing and I had to stab a worm with a hook.

Shane's handing a shotgun to Glenn. "How 'bout you, man? You gonna protect yours?"

And Glenn, Glenn doesn't look so sure, for just a second. His eyes go to Maggie, I think, because they're friends and Maggie looks upset right now, but then Glenn takes the gun anyway, in an almost angry sort of movement.

Shane turns to Maggie. "Can you shoot?"

"Can you stop?" she snaps back. "You do this, you hand out these guns, my dad will make you leave tonight!"

Leave? Leave the farm? No. Not if we kill the walkers. Not if we kill the walkers.

"We have to stay, Shane." And that's Carl, Carl coming down the steps, Beth and Patricia are standing behind him looking scared, and Carl's wearing his dad's hat and staring hard at Shane. He ends up standing beside me, and suddenly my mouth's moving.

"He's right, we can't leave Sophia." My eyes are on Carl when I say this, and for a moment, I'm remembering back to when we sort-of worked together to get the weapons from that body in the truck on the highway.

Shane nods at us, at both us. "We ain't goin' anywhere, okay? Now, look –" He's using his loud, whole-group voice again – "Hershel, he's just gotta understand, okay? He – well, he's gonna have to. Now we need to find Sophia, am I right?" Here my eyes snap to Carol, but Shane, Shane moves to Carl, kneels right in front of him. "Now I want you to take this." And he's holding out a gun, a little pistol, he's holding it out to Carl, to _Carl_, and what is he thinking?"You take it, Carl, and you keep your mother safe. You do whatever it takes, you know how, go on, take the gun and do it –"

And then Lori's there, in between Carl and me, pressing her son back and hissing at Shane, teeth bared and everything. "Rick said _no guns_. This is not your call. This is not your _decision_ to _make_."

"Oh, shit."

And everybody's head turns to T-Dog. He's far to the right and looking over at the barn, the barn that's causing so much trouble. But I quickly realize he's not talking about the barn. No, he's talking about what's appearing from the woods beside it – Rick and Hershel and that boy Jimmy, and they're holding, they're holding walkers, _walkers, _living and moving walkers on sticks, and I barely have time to gasp before Shane's running, running right towards them, and then so's my dad, and then then we all are, my people and Hershel's people, we're running, down from the house, through a gate that Shane bangs open, right up to the barn, right up to where Rick and Hershel are bringing the things, like dogs on stiff leashes, dogs trying to kill you, to kill you and eat you. Jimmy moves along, guiding them? I don't know, I just –

_ Walkers_, for God's sake!

_"What the hell're you doin'?" _barks Shane when he's close enough. I think that's what he says, anyway, I'm a little far away still because Shane's so much faster, but I know Rick says something back and then my legs have brought me close enough to hear Hershel ask why we have guns, and Shane asks, _"Are you kidding me?"_ as he slows and walks around the three men and the two walkers, two walkers who used to be a man and a woman, who are now being held just feet from Rick and Hershel by Rick and Hershel themselves and the geeks, they're thrashing and snarling and reaching out bony, hungry fingers –

"You see?" Shane yells just as I'm slowing down, breathing hard, trying to work out how this could be happening, and I move to my dad and his shotgun. "You see what they're holdin' onto?"

"I see _who _I'm holding onto!" answers Hershel, his eyes on the walker, focusing on keeping the used-to-be woman restrained, but it's fighting, it's fighting hard.

"Nah, man, you don't!" Shane's made a full circle around the crazy group but he doesn't seem to be slowing. He's worked up, Shane. And I can't blame him.

"Shane," Rick says over the walker sounds, watching his geek, arms straining on the metal stick he has the creature hooked to, "Just let us do this, and then we can talk!"

Dad has his shotgun up now, aimed at the walker Rick has. That makes me feel better, but I'm still . . . I'm still scared. And mad at Rick for letting this happen, for _doing _this himself, because this is all so wrong in so many different ways, walkers are bad, they're bad . . .

Shane agrees with me, Shane's right, he's right. "What you wanna talk about, Rick? These things ain't sick! They're not people! _They're dead! _Ain't gotta feel nothin' for 'em , 'cause all they do? They _kill!"_

– my dad yelling at my mom, me sneaking into the living room, my dad telling me to get back to bed, me seeing my mother's arm, the gashes, Mom pushing Dad away and coming over to me, telling me it's okay, but it wasn't okay, it wasn't, and it's not, not at all, it will never be okay what they did to her and Dad and me, my family and my life –

My throat tightens and air doesn't come easy, my fists form, my feet dig into the ground here on this farm, so far away from home, the home that I'll never see again, the mother I don't have anymore –

"They're the things that killed Amy!" Shane's screaming here on this farm. "They killed Otis!"

Amy. Otis. Jim. All the people that night of the fish fry and Nana and Papaw and Tyler and my mother, my mother, my mother.

"Shane, shut up!" Rick roars.

No, Shane. No, Shane. You are right.

And me? Me, Sydney Rose Dixon? I want a gun. I want a gun. I want a damn gun so I can point it at these things and I can –

Shane's gun is out now, his handgun, what's he saying to Hershel? ". . . a living, breathin' person, could they walk away from this?"

"No!" Rick yells as Shane's gun fires and the walker Hershel is holding, the used-to-be woman, takes the bullets, but not to the head, to the chest, and the walker, it flails around for a minute but then it's back to normal, growling, wanting to kill, kill, that's all they do –

"That's three rounds to the chest!" says Shane. "Could someone who's alive, could they just take that? _Why is it still coming?_"

I move forward, closer, right behind Glenn and his gun because my dad's moved off with Rick, and I watch as Hershel's walker takes more bullets, as blood splatters around, as the walker keeps going like nothing happened, because they're not human, not alive, not at all.

That's its heart, Shane says, its lungs. He asks again why it's still coming, he shoots it some more, and Rick, Rick yells _That's enough_.

And Shane, Shane says he's right. He steps up to the walker. And his voice is deep and strangled as he says, "That _is_ enough."

One more shot, right in the brain. The geek finally falls, dead, really dead. Like it should be.

I didn't even get to say goodbye to my mother. My uncle dragged me away. And my mom had a pistol, this pistol –

Hershel's dropped that metal stick thing, the thing he was holding the walker with. It falls beside the corpse, a wire at the end of the stick still around the neck. Hershel, Hershel goes to his knees. I can't see his face. I'm sure he's upset. That's not important. Killing that walker, it had to be done.

"Enough," says Shane, pacing around in front of the barn doors now, "risking our lives for a little girl who's _gone_!"

What? That stops me short. But what about what he said to Carl and me, just a minute ago? I yank my head around, find Carl, holding his mother's hand, and his face, his face -

But that's not important right now, either. Can't stop short like that, gotta keep going, gotta start this and finish it off, finish _them _off. The barn, the barn, it needs to be cleared. The walkers need to be put down, hurry up, Shane . . .

"_Enough _living next to a barn full of things that are tryin' to kill us!"

Yes, yes.

"_Enough! _Rick, it ain't like it was before!"

Rick's still holding onto his walker. My dad's still got the shotgun trained on its head, and I wish, I wish he'd just shoot the damn thing.

"Now if y'all wanna live," says Shane, "if you wanna survive, you gotta _fight _for it! I'm talkin' 'bout _fightin'! _Right here . . . right _now._" And then Shane turns and runs to the barn doors.

Where's the gun bag? Where's the gun bag? I need a gun, I need – but the bag's nowhere to be found –

"Hershel!" Rick's saying, shaking the stick and the walker. "Hershel, take the snare pole! _Hershel! _Listen to me, man, please –"

But Hershel's still on the ground, his hands loose at his sides.

Rick sounds so desperate. "Take it now! _Hershel! _Take it!"

The old man doesn't move. No one else does, either.

And Shane, Shane's going at the door. He's got a pickaxe from the wall, he's banging at the lock.

Rick yells for him not to do it. Pleads. So does Glenn. Lori shouts Rick's name. Shane doesn't stop. My hand goes to my waist, it finds my knife, and I don't pull it out, but I'm ready. I crouch down. And if one of them gets to me, if one of those _goddamn _killers, one of those _bastards _that killed my mom – my beautiful mom who cooked and smelled like flowers – if one of them gets to me, I will kill it. I will not think twice. I will kill it and I will –

The lock breaks. Rick shouts _please_. Shane takes off the panel of wood keeping the doors closed. He tosses it down, he bangs on one door, he says _come on_, he backs off, he takes his gun out again, Rick begs some more, Maggie's hugging her father, Lori's still screaming for Rick, I get in one more glance at my dad, and then there's an arm on me and it's Lori, pulling me back, back with her and Carl, and she says to get behind her but I shove her off, my eyes on the barn door, my hand on my knife, and then it happens, it begins. The doors are pushed open – not all the way because there's still a chain on them a ways up, but oh, enough, the doors open enough, and the walkers come out.

My dad, Andrea, T-Dog, they all move forward. Then the shots start. I think Shane shoots first, which is fitting. The first walker to fall is in overalls, like the walker that came after T-Dog and me on the highway. I lose track then of which walker dies at what point. Because after the first one there's just a lot of shooting and a lot of snarls and a lot of blood and a lot of dead, dead walkers, and there are so many, so many that stumble out of that barn. Glenn starts in, too, but it takes a nod from Maggie to move him forward, to make him aim in on the geeks. Rick, Rick never pulls his gun. Even after Shane turns and puts down the walker he has on his stick – his _snare pole _– Rick does not shoot. After his walker's down, Lori runs up to him, pulling Carl, and I come, too, I'm fine with being closer, I still have my knife, but Rick holds his hand out and makes us stop, yells _Stay back!_, and I look around him, I watch my dad, see as he shoots a used-to-be woman in a dress, blows the thing's evil brains right out. Lori and Carl crouch beside me, her holding her arms around him. I stand. I watch. It's bloody. But they're killers.

Then suddenly there are no more walkers coming out. Suddenly there are just a bunch of rotten corpses on the ground. Not about to hurt anyone else. Not about to kill any more mothers or sisters or husbands or anyone.

Guns are lowered. There's a stillness, a calm. The calm after the storm, I've heard that somewhere. I realize I'm panting, I realize my hand's still gripping my knife, or maybe gripping it again, I'm not sure, I wasn't paying much attention to me.

Somebody's sobbing. Beth. Jimmy's hugging her. And – and Dale's walking up behind us all. His eyes are wide. His mouth is open. But – but it had to be done, Dale. It had to be done, Beth, they are _killers_ –

And then there's a growl. One more, I can barely hear it, but it's there. My eyes go back to the barn, to the partly-open doors, to the darkness inside. My hand tightens around my knife again, my eyes narrow, my heart hardens up against Dale's wide eyes and Beth's tears, because there's one more to put down. One more.

Through the barn doors, a shadow darkens the darkness even more, a thin little shadow. That shadow steps out and it's not a shadow anymore.

My fingers slip from my knife's hilt and the world doesn't move, not a bit, not at all, and my heart doesn't pound and my blood doesn't pump and everything, everything, everyone is still.

Because the walker is just a little taller than me. It has blonde hair. A rainbow shirt. Skinny arms, arms that come up to block the sun, arms that should be holding a doll a girl named Eliza Morales gave to a friend to say goodbye.

The arms fall, the eyes – cloudy and blank – focus in on one of us, on someone. The teeth bare. The growl comes again. A walker's growl. The growl of someone dead, dead, dead.

"Oh, God – oh, oh – _Sophia!"_

Carol runs past me and my dad catches her before she can go to the walker. The walker without a doll. My dad and Carol fall and he keeps his arm around her and she crumples into a mess and keeps sobbing for Sophia, Sophia.

The Walker Without a Doll moves forward. Its feet drag.

. . . . .

_I creep closer to the animal, adjusting my grip on the knife, trying for the second time this morning to keep my steps quiet. The rabbit is crouching in the brush. I think maybe it's hurt, I can't believe it hasn't run off yet, unless it's just really unusually dumb._

_"Sydney, don't," I hear Sophia plead from behind me. _

_. . . . ._

Carl's crying.

The Walker Without a Doll steps through the bodies.

. . . . .

_A cross-legged Sophia carefully settles the doll beside her and then slides the deck from its box. Her hands fumble as she shuffles, making me doubt she plays cards much. "Go Fish?" she asks Carl and me._

. . . . .

Carol wails.

The Walker Without a Doll keeps moving. It's getting closer to the group but no one moves an inch.

. . . . .

_Dad's just got T-Dog to a very unsteady stand when there's a scream. A small, little scream, like from just a kid, a girl, and I look towards that scream and all I can think is _Sophia_._

_. . . . ._

Lori says don't watch.

Rick walks forward.

_. . . . ._

_"It'da been better if it were me."_

_ "If what were you?"_

_ "If it'd been me and not Sophia. She's just a kid."_

_. . . . ._

Rick draws his gun. He moves in between Andrea and Shane – Shane, who let the walkers out. Who wanted this. Who hasn't moved since the Walker Without a Doll came out of the shadows. Rick goes past him. The Walker Without a Doll gets closer. Never pausing. Never understanding anything. Dead.

Rick raises his gun.

– a Cherokee Rose in a beer bottle and a clean RV, a bandage under my father's ribs and a map of the woods, two strong arms wrapped around me and the words _Only a mattera time_, and a doll, a doll in tan arms and then in pale arms, then in T-Dog's hands and –

A gunshot.

Real.

Here, The Walker Without a Doll is no different from the others. Its head is blown back and red stuff flies out. Its legs crumple and its body hits the ground with the usual thump. But the other walkers didn't cause a mother to make a sound that tells you she's damaged beyond repair. The other walkers didn't change everything in the world when they dropped down. The other walkers were killers.

The Walker Without a Doll was a girl who once asked me not to kill a rabbit because it wasn't hurting anyone.


	22. The Aftermath

About the same time Rick lowers his gun my body decides to turn. Then my legs decide to walk. My hands want to clutch my elbows and so that is exactly what they do. My head sees all of this because it is down.

Step, step, step. The grass reaches under the hems of my jeans and tickles my ankles and I don't like that. But the soil's nice beneath my shoes, not too hard or too soft. Step, step, step, past Lori holding Carl and on and on and through the gate Shane banged open on our way down here only a few minutes ago. My legs are so good. My legs take care of me and know what to do. Where are they taking me? The house. They are taking me to the house.

Footsteps behind me, beside me, in front of me and away. Carol. Running and crying. The jacket tied around her waist flaps around. Will my legs change direction? No. To the house they carry me.

My dad calls my name. Just once, and he's close enough that he's not yelling for me, just sort of tossing my name out. I don't answer and I don't look back. My legs have a mission and they are determined to follow through. Such good legs. To the house I go. It's a nice house. I climb the stairs and cross the porch and go inside. There's a bookshelf in front of me. I cross through this room and another room and another and then I'm in the kitchen. I remember where everything is. I pull a stool to a counter and stand on it and take the big red coffee can out of a cabinet. I know how to make coffee because Mom would have me make it for her some mornings when she was hungover. In the last year she got hungover a lot and so I got good at it. I remember how to do it. I go to the coffeemaker and put the coffee into a filter and the water into where the water goes. I decide to make a whole pot in case anyone else wants some. I press the _on _button and wait. People come in. Hershel's family. They cry and stay in the living room. Patricia enters the kitchen and asks what I'm doing and I say I'm making coffee because my mom drank coffee when she was sad and I thought it would help. She leaves and the coffee is made and I find a mug and pour myself some. I don't spill any. I leave the coffeemaker on so the coffee won't get cold. I cross back through the rooms, one of which is the living room. I don't look at Hershel's family. A girl is crying. Beth, I think. One of the walkers in the barn used to be her mother. Her mother should have just killed herself. I leave the living room and go through the room with the bookshelf and then I'm out on the porch again. It's a long porch. I walk to the end of it, the end away from the barn, and I sit down with my shoulder pressed against the rails and my back against the wall. I can't really see the barn from here. And the railing and the two rocking chairs to my right make me feel blocked off, which is nice. I like that. I can see the rest of the farm in front of me, I can see the RV and our tents, but I turn my head so I don't. I look out at the stable and the woods beyond that. It's peaceful out there. I raise the mug to my lips and dip the tip of my tongue into the coffee. I still don't like the taste. I drink it anyway because I _do_ like the warmth that spreads through my body with each gulp.

Minutes, minutes. The wind plays with my hair and it's so good and quiet here in my little corner.

Then come Dale and Carl. I hear them talking. I don't bother making sense of the words. I don't think they see me, and I think they're gone after the screen door opens and shuts, but then light footsteps approach and Carl sits down across from me. I sip coffee and we don't talk until he finally says, "I thought we'd find her."

I nod because I'm supposed to.

"I mean, you and me."

My eyes want to look at him and so they do. Carl's eyes aren't red anymore. They're pointing out at the stable, and Carl has his knees up, his hands propped on them. "Like, maybe she was hiding somewhere. In a cave or a tree. She'd be safe, and . . . you'd track her. I know you can track. And then we'd find her and bring her back."

I don't know why Carl and I would be out in the woods alone looking for her. But I guess that doesn't matter much. It's a nice idea and so I let it live on in his head even though it's hopeless in a lot of ways now.

"My dad," Carl says, "He did the right thing. Shooting her like that –"

"It."

"What?"

"Shooting _it _like that." My eyes find a patch of wildflowers almost exactly halfway in between here and the stable. Light purple and very lovely. "What your dad shot? That wasn't her."

He doesn't say anything back. I drink coffee until about half of it is gone and I decide I can't stomach it anymore. It's gone lukewarm anyway. I set the cup beside me and let the scent drift up as it will.

The Sun never gets sad. It never slows down no matter what happens on this Earth it warms and lights so well. It knows its job and it does it, it crosses the sky at the right time and along the right path, strong and sure. I watch the Sun move over the sky as the world spins along. That's what it is, really, it's not the Sun moving at all, it's the world. The Earth. The Earth moves no matter what happens to it. Even though it doesn't feel like it moves, it does. The Earth never lets me down, not really.

Carl keeps being quiet. Maybe I should talk to him. But I don't. I guess I'm selfish or bad.

Later, after the Earth has sent the Sun across a good portion of the sky, someone comes up the porch steps and through the front doors. More people – I guess Hershel's people – come out a minute later. I don't look at them but I hear them walking down. Then Lori comes over to Carl and me, her hand lightly resting on the rail above his head. "It's time for the funeral, guys."

Such a soft voice that she uses.

Carl stands. I don't. I like it here.

"Sydney?" Lori.

"I'm not coming."

And she pauses but then walks away. Carl goes with her. I sit with my cold coffee and let the silence surround me and get inside me and make everything still. Inside me, still is good. Go, Sun, go. Such a good Sun. Such a good Earth. The Earth, it turns away the minutes, the half-hour. Then people come up the stairs and into the house. No talking. Just crying. Then someone's beside me and it's my dad. He has his crossbow. "You shoulda come."

I don't say anything.

His boot comes out and slides away my mug. "And you're too damn young for coffee."

I don't think it's fair how he gets to swear whenever he wants and I can't.

"C'mon. We're goin' huntin'."

Hunting. It's been awhile. But out in the woods, away from the barn. Yes, yes, hunting. And so I stand and follow Dad across the porch. We leave the cold coffee cup where it sits.

Down the steps, across the field. The good soil and the tickly grass. I don't look towards the barn. The barn, the barn, the barn. I hear people over there, though. Taking care of things.

We go past camp. On and on and on and we get to what looks like an old stone part of a long-gone house right on the edge of the woods and Dad examines it for a minute but then we pass that, too. Into the forest. The dark forest with all the secrets and the walkers and the animals. I become more like someone who can feel with every step I take, and so that's probably why about a hundred yards in I sag against a tree and sink to the ground and cover my eyes with my hands and take a lot of very ragged breaths. I hear and feel my dad sit down beside me and he pulls me into his arms and I don't cry but it's hard to breathe and Dad rubs my back and I'm scaring off all the game but Dad doesn't get mad.

"You said you'd find her."

I don't mean to say that but it happens.

Dad's hand stiffens and he stops rubbing my back but he doesn't speak and I stay on his lap.

And that wasn't the right thing to say. Gotta fix it, gotta . . . "I know you did everything you could," I whisper. These words don't sound like me. "I just really thought . . . I mean, the roses . . ."

"Shh. Deep breaths."

He's rubbing my back again, so that's good.

My lungs start working better and Dad leads me back out of the woods, and I get less and less hurt and more and more numb with each step that takes me out. The exact opposite of before. I don't mind the numb. We break back out into the field but my dad doesn't head to camp. I realize he's gathered thin little sticks, a little shorter than me. When did that happen? That stone structure from before, he sits on the base of it and I do, too. He takes out his knife and starts carving into the sticks, making them thin and sharp at the ends. I reach for one of the sticks and do the same, though I don't know why and he doesn't tell me. It seems like I should know but I don't. Oh, well. My knife's smaller and he's stronger and he can do three sticks in the time it takes me to do one. The knives make a scraping sound against the wood and it's nice.

Time goes on.

"Moving to the suburbs?"

That's Lori. I didn't see her coming, even though there's nothing but a lot of grass in between this stone thing and the white block that's the house. My dad doesn't answer Lori and so I don't either.

"Listen," she says as she nears. "Beth's in some kind of catatonic shock. We need Hershel."

I don't know what _catatonic shock_ means. This stick is almost good and sharp and done.

"Yeah, so what?" Dad's voice is low and sounds kind of like what it sounds like when he's really tired or just woke up.

Lori's beside us now. She crouches down next to Dad. "So I need you to run into town real quick and bring him and Rick back."

I don't want my dad to leave.

Dad doesn't say anything to Lori. He keeps carving up the stick.

"Daryl?"

I don't look up, but I hear Dad say, "Your bitch went window-shopping. You want him, fetch him yourself.""

That's a mean thing to say.

"I got better things to do," Dad finishes.

I set the stick down beside me in the stack Dad and I have made but I don't reach for another because they're by Lori. I slide my knife into its sheath and watch a beetle run in between my shoes.

"What's the matter with you?" asks Lori. Her voice is high and not understanding. "Why would you be so selfish?"

_"Selfish?"_ Dad stands. His voice is loud. "Listen to me, Olive Oyl –"

She's an old cartoon character but I don't get why Dad's calling Lori that. I stare at the beetle. I bet it's nice to be a beetle. Simple and fast.

"I's out there lookin' for that little girl every single day! I took a bullet and an arrow in the process! Don't you tell me 'bout me gettin' my hands dirty!"

He's waving his knife around but he doesn't mean it in a scary way even though his face is scary.

Lori's stood, too. She's silent, though.

Dad, Dad says, "You want those two idiots, have a nice ride!" And then he sits back down beside me. "I'm done lookin' for people . . ."

His knife goes against the stick again. Scrape, scrape. And Lori walks away.

Dad stepped on the beetle when he moved back to me.

I don't scrape at any more sticks. I watch Lori go and then I stare out at the woods.

"Why'd you do that?" I finally ask.

Scrape. "'Cause it ain't my damn job to find all the dumbass lost sheep." Scrape.

Okay.

He throws down the stick. He stands. His crossbow's leaning against the stone. He grabs it. "I'm goin' huntin'," he mutters. "You can come but you can't break down like that again."

I feel angry and hurt but in a distant way. More like I know it's how I should feel but I'm just not up to it. I stand and look straight at my dad and then I turn on my heel and lead the way into the woods and hope the numb stays around this time.

. . . . .

We see the walker not long after Dad shoots his second squirrel. We're deep into the woods and beside a creek. The walker used to a woman and it's wearing what's left of a dress. My dad sees it before me and I don't get a look at it until it has an arrow in its head and it's collapsing. My dad goes over to it and takes a thick string from his pocket. There are four ears on this string. Without a word to me, he uses his knife to cut this walker's ears off and then he adds them to the collection.

I remember what Shane said about my dad carrying geek ears around his neck. Dad glances at me and puts the string in his pocket. I don't ask him why he does any of this.

. . . . .

Dad gets one more squirrel and two rabbits. He says he's going to look through the guns tomorrow and see if there's one I can hunt with. We get back to the stone structure and I ask and Dad says it used to be a chimney. Then he and I go back to the main camp and I put all my stuff in a bag from the highway and Dad takes down our tent and Carl asks me what's going on and I ignore him and he goes away and we leave the cots and just take the sleeping bags and Dad gets a jug of water and his gun and a smaller one that I know must be for me even though he doesn't hand it over and then we ride out to the chimney on the motorcycle and we set everything back up out here. Dad got some wire from the RV and so we go back to the creek, where he sets some snares and I watch how and he has me make the last one on my own. Back at the chimney, Dad has me help make a fire and then he guts and cleans the rabbits and two of the squirrels and then he watches and instructs as I do the last squirrel on my own. I've almost forgotten how but I still do it well.

It's all that quick. Moving away from the others and becoming our own camp. And just like with the ears, I don't ask why Dad does this. It doesn't seem to matter.

Not a lot does.

**. . . . .**

**A.N.: Thanks to all of you for reading, and especially thanks to those of you who have reviewed. I appreciate the feedback. Just wanted to say so.**


	23. Rough Night

Not long after it gets dark, Dad and I are beside the fire and he's nudging it with a stick. Sparks fly up and the fire crackles and Dad and I don't talk. We ate some rabbit earlier and I barely tasted it. Dad made me eat more than I wanted. Which was pretty much nothing. I lean against him now. He's tense.

There are footsteps and I raise my head to see Carol running up from the darkness. "We can't find Lori," she pants as she slows. "And the others aren't back yet, either."

My dad doesn't take his eyes off the fire. "Dumb bitch must've gone off lookin' for 'em."

Dad called Mom a bitch once. I was four. Mom slapped him and he said he was sorry and they had a drink.

"What?" Carol's eyes meet mine. Hers are orange in the firelight.

She doesn't look different enough, I decide. Her daughter's dead. I heard Carol wail and I know she's broken on the inside, and so there should be some sort of change on the outside, some sort of signal, a shift. But there isn't.

"Yeah, she asked me to go," Dad says. "Told her I was done bein' an errand boy."

"And you didn't say anything?"

He doesn't say anything now, either. I look at the fire, too.

Carol sighs. She turns and walks off. But then she stops. Then she comes back. "Don't do this. Please?"

Dad doesn't reply. I wish Carol would go away. She's making the muscles in Dad's face tighten up. It doesn't help when she steps in front of Dad and points at me. "Do you really think this is what she needs right now?"

Dad's on his feet in an instant. I nearly fall over. "You really wanna talk parentin' with me? Least I know how to keep my kid safe!"

I close my eyes and inhale the campfire smoke, letting it burn my throat and nostrils and just fill me all the way up so I can float away.

Carol leaves and my dad sits down and starts prodding the fire again. His arm wraps around me but it somehow doesn't feel like a hug.

. . . . .

I realize later that there is something I need to ask _why_ about. I don't even realize it, actually. It just slips from my tongue.

"Why'd you look for her?"

"What?"

"I mean," I say softly, watching the flames twist and twirl, "I know it was the right thing to do. But you looked harder'n any of 'em. Rick, or Shane . . . I mean, you almost died." My eyes click onto his. "Why?"

He stares at me for a while. He looks away when he finally answers, picking up the prodding stick from beside him and poking the fire, making a log fall, sending up sparks. "Kept thinkin', if it were you . . . How hard would I want other people to look?"

I swallow. He pokes the fire some more. I say, "You don't blame yourself, right? That's not why we came out here?"

He makes another log fall and then tosses the stick down harder than he needs to. "Why the hell would I blame myself?" he says as he stands, moves around me, goes to the sort-of wood pile we got together earlier. "I nearly died lookin' for that little girl, I did everything I could, just like you said earlier today." He throws a branch onto the fire. Also too hard. "Or what, you change your mind? Think it was my fault now?"

All I have to do is look at him for a moment and then he rubs his face.

"I'm bein' mean, ain't I?"

"No." My little voice pretty much gives away that I'm lying, though.

Dad sits down next to me again. He puts his arms around me and it's not like before, it's a real hug now. He rests first his forehead on my head, then his chin. "I moved us out here 'cause I'm done worryin' over other people. I gotta look out for my own."

Which means me. "That why you taught me that snare?"

"Mmhmm. And that's why tomorrow I'ma take you out shootin'."

And I understand. "You want me to be able to take care of myself. So I don't end up like her."

Dad's hand moves up my back and clamps onto my shoulder.

And suddenly I'm imagining living in a terrible world where my dad is gone and the group is gone and I'm all alone and really, really, what's there to live for then?

But no. No. He's just teaching me this in case I get lost. That's it.

"Daryl!"

I jump a little and my dad twists around, one arm still around me. A figure is coming up to our camp, not Carol, it's shorter than Carol. And this figure wears a cowboy hat.

Carl stomps up to our fire and doesn't even glance at me. "Why didn't you just go when my mom asked you to?"

Dad huffs out a breath and looks at the fire. His arm leaves my back and I feel a surge of anger at Carl, Carl, who now throws an arm out.

"She went into town by herself! She could get hurt, and if she does, that's gonna be on you!"

My dad stands up and faces Carl. I grab his shirt. "Dad."

He goes still, fingers flexing. I stand too and move around him, and without a word to Carl I take a hold of his arm and pull him away, out into the field in between his camp and mine. I don't speak until we're too far for my dad to hear us, and then I let him go with a little shove and turn on him like a wildcat. "Never talk to him like that again," I hiss. "Ever."

Carl's furious. I don't think I've ever seen him mad before, and even just with the moonlight I can tell I don't like it, the way his eyes are squinted and how his teeth clash together. "My mom could be in danger."

"That's not my dad's fault! He didn't tell her to run off into town herself!"

"_He_ wouldn't do it!"

My irritation boils, boils until it's anger. "He didn't have to! It's not his job, Carl!"

He's breathing hard and so am I. We glare at each other. "_He_ would've been in danger if he went, you get that?" I say. "Why would _that_ have been okay? _My _dad out to rescue _Lori's _husband. _Your _dad." I shake my head and turn back to the campfire. "People gotta look out for their own."

I'm five steps away when he says, "So you're just going to run off out here?"

I stop but don't turn. My dad's watching us, I can tell, but I'm still pretty sure he can't hear.

"Sophia's dead, Sydney. My mom and dad are missing. I don't know if –" His voice catches. Then, "You're my friend."

I swallow, close my eyes. He's making this hard. Harder than it should be. And today has already been hard enough.

"Can't you convince your dad to –"

"No. Go back, Carl. I hope your parents show up." And then I walk, I walk, and I don't look behind me. Carl'll listen, I know. He'll go back and let our new world spin right.

"Calm your boyfriend down?" Dad asks when I near.

I stop, grit my teeth. "He ain't my boyfriend. I don't even like him."

I don't mean that.

Dad nods behind me. "Don't think he knows that."

For a second I'm afraid he's telling me Carl's coming back, but when I look over my shoulder the kid's dark shape is bobbing away, shrinking and shrinking. And I sit back down beside my dad and try not to think for a while.

. . . . .

I'm in bed when Carol shows up the second time. I've been curled up inside my sleeping bag for twenty or so minutes, and my eyes haven't even been able to shut, and then I'm hearing footsteps nearing from the house-side of the tent. Lighter than my dad's. These footsteps walk around for a while, and I don't know where Dad is, and I'm reaching for my knife and sitting up when I hear his rough-version voice: "What're you doin'?"

"Keepin' an eye on you." That voice is hard to hear, because it's Carol's and it doesn't carry as much. Why is she back? Didn't she get my dad's message the first time?

"Ain't you a peach . . ." Dad says. Not in a friendly way.

I wish he'd be nicer to her. Right now, anyway. Even if he is hurt – as much as someone as strong as Dad _can _get hurt, I mean.

"I'm not gonna let you pull away," says Carol. "You've earned your place."

"If you spent half your time mindin' your daughter's business instead of stickin' your nose in everybody else's, she'd still be alive!"

No, no . . . I press my face into my sleeping bag, almost cover my ears with it. But I can't make myself, I can't.

A pause. Long. Then Carol's barely-loud-enough-to-hear, "Go ahead."

"Go ahead and what?"

Another pause.

Dad again. "Man, just go! I don't want you here!"

Please stop, Dad. Please.

"You're a real piece of work, lady," Dad snaps.

Why isn't she leaving?

"What, are you gonna make this about my daddy or some crap like that? Man, you don't know _jack . . . _You're _afraid_. You're afraid 'cause you're all alone! You got no husband . . . no daughter . . ."

I get out of my sleeping bag then. I have to. Hearing this hurts, I need to –

"You don't know what to do with yourself!"

I come out of the tent and Dad and Carol are over by the line Dad hung the animal skins and the ears from. Dad's facing away from me. Carol could see me but I don't think she does.

Dad, Dad's jabbing a finger at her. "And you ain't my problem! Sophia wasn't mine!"

My mouth opens and my tongue tries, it tries.

_"All you had to do was keep an eye on her!"_

"Dad, stop!" My voice is strangled and wrong. "Please stop . . ." My eyes are starting to swell, and Dad whirls to look at me, then turns to Carol again, then steps closer to our tent. He points.

"Get back inside!"

And so I do. I get back inside and I crawl into my sleeping bag and I cry so hard that I can't hear what happens between the grownups after that. They don't yell anymore, at least. And oh, I cry. Every tear the numb held back, every bad emotion, it all comes out and it hurts, it _hurts,_ with my throat swelling up and my chest, my heart, my heart aching . . .

Dad comes in after a few minutes. He yelled at me outside, but he doesn't do that now. I lie there, whimpering, and he sits down beside me and rubs my back. "Baby girl. Baby girl . . . C'mon, now . . . Little Bit, everything's fine . . . _Please_ stop, sweetheart . . ."

But I can't, I can't. I cry myself to sleep. The only good part about it is that Dad's hand on my back is the last thing I'm aware of before I'm out.

. . . . .

I dream of my mother. Only it is not my mother. It is her corpse, and it comes for me out of that barn, right after Sophia. Rick and the others are gone. My dad is gone. I am alone with the walker that used to be my mother, and I have a gun in my hand. The walker gets closer and closer, and I scream, and I can see the bite on its arm, and the hair that used to be beautiful and shiny is now tangled and patchy, and I raise the gun, I cock it, but I can't pull the trigger, I can't, I can't, the gun falls from my hand, and the walker comes closer, but the walker, the walker still has my mother's eyes, the pine tree eyes, and they're crying, and is my mother still there? Is she still in there? _Mom! Mom!_ The walker grabs me. It bites into my wrist and I feel skin break. Mom's eyes squint. _Mama!_

And then I wake up sweating and digging my fingernails into my wrist. My dad's fallen asleep next to me, his sleeping bag untouched on the other side of the tent. I gulp a few times and then crawl out of my bag, trying to be quiet. I drag the bag about a foot, so it's right beside Dad, and then I lie on top of it and press my head into his chest.

His hand comes up and lands in between my shoulder blades. "Baby girl, you alright?" he asks in his half-awake voice.

"Yeah." I grip his shirt so he won't move off, because even though I'm too big to need him with me when I sleep, right now I really, really want him here. And he doesn't go away.


	24. Randall

I'm sitting on the house steps but I'm watching camp. The main camp, I mean. The people there look little from here, of course, but I can still pick out my dad easy. He's gearing up at Shane's car with Shane and Andrea and T-Dog, because they're all going after Rick and Hershel and Glenn – who apparently was with Rick when he ran off to find Hershel, who ran off to get a drink. Lori got back last night, so that's one good thing, but still. Three people are missing.

Me, I'm just sitting here with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, partly wondering where the heat I was complaining about just days ago has run off to but mostly thinking that I really don't get my dad. My dad . . . Yesterday he said he was done looking for people and this morning he's going off to look for people. Last night he said it was time for him to focus on taking care of his own and now he's off to take care of people who _aren't _his own_. _People who are _not_ me. His daughter.

It's like Sophia all over again . . .

Too soon, too soon.

It's not that I'm jealous or anything. I'm not. I just, I don't get it. And I don't like my dad not being here. But I'm not jealous.

There's the now-familiar squeak and bang of the screen door opening and closing, and then Carl is sitting next to me. Well, sort of. We're on the same step – second one off the ground, so I can stretch my legs but still feel the soil under my shoes – but he's not right by me. A whole person or even two could fit in between us.

I talk before he can. That way I get control of this conversation right off the bat. "I'm glad your mom's back."

"Thanks . . ." He sighs. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him looking at me. "She's pregnant."

I can't help facing him. A baby? Now?

But Carl doesn't look upset about it. And we _are_ on this farm. Now that the barn's empty, this farm's safe again. Or, for the first time, really.

Guess there's nothing wrong with a baby now.

I'm supposed to say congratulations but that would sound too out-of-place with us, so I just say, "That's cool."

He scrapes his boot along the ground and makes me wish I still had my boots. "I shouldn't have gone down to your camp like that last night," he says.

And I didn't expect him to say that.

"I'm sorry."

That neither.

"You were worried about your mom," I murmur. "When my mom –" What? What am I saying? That story is _mine_. I can't just rattle it off like it's nothing . . .

"It's okay," says Carl quickly. "I know you don't like to talk about her. You told me that back on the highway."

I remember. The Snickers bar in the white car that looked like Nana's. My dad getting onto me and then Carl and me laughing over it. Laughing like friends.

And Carl, Carl called me his friend last night.

We should've shared that Snickers with Sophia. I almost tell him that, but no, no way. Like I said, too soon, too soon to talk about this with anyone but Dad.

"So are you really staying down there?" Carl asks.

I nod and dig my teeth into one of my knuckles.

"Why?"

"'Cause my dad says so." These are the jeans I was in when I fell on the thorns that night. There's a laundry machine in the house and Carol washed the camp's clothes in there, and they had some sort of remover, so you almost can't see the bloodstain anymore. But there's still the hole, and I finger it now, feeling the scab underneath, remembering, remembering, and sometimes I wish people didn't remember.

"But _wh_y?"

"You ask a lot of questions." Merle used to say that to me sometimes. It meant _leave me alone, _but I don't want Carl to leave me alone, I just want to change the subject.

"Wanna ask me one?" he says.

I think for a minute. A question to ask Carl. A question that doesn't involve his dead friend or missing father or his gunshot wound or any of the other of thousands of bad things in his life now.

"Boy or girl?" I finally settle on. "Which do you want?"

I did good with that question. He smiles, kind of shyly. "I don't know . . . I think maybe I'd like a girl." He looks at me. "She could be named Sophia."

Carl doesn't understand that it's too soon, I guess.

I'm saved from having to steer away from the subject – again – by the faint crunching of gravel. Fast, from a vehicle. I look up and I see it, this red like-a-van-but-not-a-van thing, rolling down the road leading to the house. I stand and so does Carl. The people at the camp come running after the vehicle, which parks just a few yards from the steps Carl and I are on. The driver's door opens and out comes Rick, alive and well.

"Dad!" Carl jumps down the steps and runs to him. I hear people file out of the house, and Lori and Carol and Patricia and Maggie and Jimmy all pass by me. I sit back down. Lori holds Rick tight, the way wives do with their husbands. Maggie runs to Hershel – no, she passes Hershel, goes to Glenn. Huh. Hershel walks past Patricia and towards the house, tells her to prepare the shed for surgery – what surgery? I look over Rick, over Glenn, but neither of them look hurt, or bloody, or anything. The people who were at the camp, everyone who was about to go out looking (plus Dale), there all here now, my dad's here now, and Rick's talking heatedly to Lori because I think he just realized she was in a car wreck last night, and –

"Who the hell's that?" That's T-Dog. He's pointing at the red vehicle, his face matching his words perfectly.

"That's Randall," answers Glenn. And we don't have a Randall, so I jump down from the stairs and move over next to T-Dog, and there's a man in that vehicle's backseat, a man with dark hair and a slumped head and a blindfold on.

. . . . .

"We couldn't just leave him behind. He would've bled out . . . if he lived that long."

These are Rick's words. Our group and Hershel's group, we're all at the dining room table. Except for my dad. He disappeared a while ago. Didn't tell me where to. Caught my eye, glanced at the house, and walked off.

Rick's talking about the guy. Randall. His leg was – what was the word Rick used? – _impaled_. Randall's leg was impaled by one of those spike-things that some fences have on their tops. In other words, the spike drove right through his leg and Rick and the others brought him back here, even though just minutes before Randall got hurt him and his people – other people, live people – were the enemy. They were shooting at Rick and Glenn and Hershel.

I don't get Rick sometimes, either.

He's at the head of the table, which to my left. To my right are his son and wife, and I don't know exactly how I ended up here, but I feel like I'm misplaced.

"It's gotten bad in town," says Glenn, sitting across from me. He sounds really tired. I play with the white tablecloth.

"What do we do with him?" asks Andrea. She means Randall, of course. But isn't it obvious? He'll have to join us now.

Rick opens his mouth to tell Andrea this, but he's cut off by Hershel, who's entering the room. "I repaired his calf muscle as best I can, but he'll probably have nerve damage." He's wiping off his hands. "Won't be on his feet for at least a week."

Maybe we can set him up on guard duty. Dale likes to walk around the roof of the RV, but you don't actually have to do that.

"When he is," Rick says, straightening, "We give him a canteen, take him out to the main road, send him on his way."

What? "The walkers'll get him," I blurt out, blinking.

The screen door creaks open the same time I talk, and I briefly look over my shoulder at my dad, but I turn back to Rick as he says, gently, "He'll have a fightin' chance."

I look at my hands, then over at Carl, then my hands again. I'm not sure –

"We're just gonna let him go?" Shane asks. He and Andrea are over by the window, all the way across the room from me. Shane's raising his eyebrows. "He knows where we are."

"He was blindfolded the whole way here," says Rick. "He's not a threat."

"Not a threat?" Shane repeats. He's disbelieving. I glance over my shoulder and see that my dad's leaning against the door, in here but not really. He winks at me but doesn't move. Shane, Shane says, "How many of them were there? You killed three of their men, you took one of 'em hostage, but they just ain't gonna come lookin' for him?"

"They left him for dead!" shoots back Rick. "_No one_ is looking!"

"We should still post a guard," says T-Dog.

Hershel says Randall's out cold and will be for hours. Shane says he's going to get him flowers and candy, but of course he's joking, in a mean way, because he's angry. He says we're in Fantasyland and then tries to storm out, but Hershel stops him, saying they haven't even talked about what Shane did at the barn. I don't want to hear about that, but Hershel doesn't go into detail, anyway.

"Let me make this perfectly clear, once and for all," he tells Shane. He sounds like my dad does when I'm in trouble. "This is my farm. Now I wanted you gone –"

I didn't know that. Wait, does he mean just Shane or all of us?

"– Rick talked me out of it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. So do us both a favor. Keep your mouth shut."

And Shane, Shane looks at him for a while, looks at _all_ of us for a while, and then leaves without speaking anymore. But my Papaw would say you could see smoke coming from his ears.

Rick tells Hershel we're not going to do anything about it today. About Randall. Rick says let's just cool off. People start to get up, to move, and my dad catches my eye again and we leave. Carol's right by him when he opens the door but he doesn't say anything to her.

"Where'd you go?" I ask outside, just as we break from the others, and I have to work to keep up with my dad's long strides.

"Lookin' for a rifle for you. None small enough, but that ain't a surprise."

"I can handle a big gun."

"Some of them _big guns _got a kick that'd take your arm off. I'll take you out to shoot a handgun, though."

"What about when we go huntin'?"

"I'll have to do all the shootin'."

I kick the ground, the good soil. "I won't really be huntin', then."

"Well, it ain't my fault you won't grow." He pushes on my shoulder, teasing me. I run into him and he barely moves an inch off his path.

We walk for a while longer, and our chimney is closer than the house by the time I say, "If we leave him – Randall, I mean – if we leave him out on the road like that, like Rick wants, he won't make it."

Dad's quiet.

"Why can't he just stay with us?"

"We can't trust him."

"Well, not yet, but if we get to know him –"

"It don't work like that, Little Bit." And now we're at our camp, and he pauses and looks me over. "Ain't you got a jacket somewhere?"

I shake my head. "Why don't it work like that?"

"'Cause it don't." He goes to the chimney and grabs at a shirt he has hanging on one of the rocks, up close to the top. "Put this on. You'll freeze otherwise." He tosses the shirt to me and I catch it.

"It ain't that cold," I say.

"We're ridin' the motorcycle out to shoot. You'll be cold then."

And so I put the shirt on, rolling up the sleeves so I can still use my hands. It smells like smoke, the shirt. "'Cause it don't _why_?"

"What?"

"I asked why we can't just get to know Randall, and you said it don't work like that, and I asked why –"

"Yeah, I get it." He takes his crossbow from beside the chimney, slings it onto his back. "Look, it don't matter anyway. We ain't a part of all that."

I look around at our camp. I like it. I like having the space and the privacy and I like being close to the woods. But way, way out in the distance, I can see that little spot of color right by the house. The main camp, the RV and the tents with Carl and everyone. And I liked it there, too. And I miss Dale. I haven't talked to him since the day before yesterday.

"Sydney!"

I shake my head and turn it up. Dad's right by me, giving me a strange look. "You with me, kid?"

"Yeah."

"Good. C'mon. Let's see how much you gotta practice 'fore you can outshoot your old man."


	25. Never an Explanation

A week passes.

My dad and I, we stay at our camp. Carol comes down twice and is greeted warmly neither time. Nobody else comes to see us and I don't blame them but it still makes my stomach heavy sometimes. I don't tell my dad that, though.

Dad takes me shooting every day, at the same place Rick and Shane took me and the others to before, and we never stay long, because we can't waste too much ammo, but I'm good. The little revolver Dad got for me fits right into my hand and by the fourth day I'm hitting the target nearly every time. That's when Dad starts letting me carry the gun, and he doesn't say so, but he's proud, I can tell.

When we're not target shooting, we're hunting. We hunt for us and for the camp. Dad lets me deliver the game to the others most of the time, though I have to come straight back, because (and he doesn't say _this,_ either) he doesn't like for me to get out of his sight much these days. These days, these days since Sophia.

Anyway, delivering the game, that's the only time I get to see Carl and Dale and the others. I like bringing them the meat but it's hard, because I could talk to Dale all day but I can't, and when Carl sees me – at least the first couple of times I'm there – he asks if I'll stay a while. Because he thinks of me as his friend now.

But I don't stay.

Dad and me don't just hunt animals. We hunt walkers, too. Dad has me practice tracking them. Tracking's pretty easy for me, since I've been doing it since I was so young, and since it's in my blood. What we do is, we go into the swamps and we track geeks, sometimes all day, and it's almost too easy when the walkers stay around the mud and their tracks are clear as day. I like it better when we get on the trail of one of the ones that wander into the woods, where it's dry and the leaves hide things better. It's more of a challenge, better practice. When we find the walker I'm tracking, Dad always shoots it right off.

Until exactly one week after we've moved, when he doesn't.

On this day, we catch up to this walker that's given me a lot of trouble, that's dragged us forward all afternoon. It's this tall, used-to-be man in basketball shorts, and it's gotten itself deep into the woods, farther than any of the others I've tracked so far. When it finally comes into sight, it's still heading away from us, struggling up a slope. Dad touches my shoulder, his little cue for _Good job, _and then he moves forward, soundlessly, lifting his crossbow. But he stops. He lowers the crossbow, he turns to me and thinks for a minute, and then he backs off. He jerks his head at the walker.

I stare at him for a moment, because he's never told me to take one down before. But he nods in a _go on _kind of way, and so I guess he means it. My hand finds my little revolver, tucked safely into my waistband. I pull it out, I lift it, I cock it, and for just a tiny second I remember my dream about Mom as walker in the barn but I shove it away just as fast. The walker is still close enough to hit, since the hill's giving it so much trouble and it's too stupid to turn another way, and I haven't practiced with a moving target yet, not with this gun and not since before the walkers, but I think I can do it. I aim, I line the geek's head right up in my sights, like it's a bottle on a fence. No, a bottle in the water, bobbing around. Or a squirrel, maybe, but worse, much worse, and I think about my mother and Jim and Sophia and my finger goes to the trigger and –

And my dad puts his hand on the gun, pushing, making me lower it.

My finger pops away from the trigger, and the walker's still there and not looking and just waiting to get shot, and I give my dad a _What? _look. He shakes his head, signals for me to put the gun away, and then he steps forward again, raises his crossbow again, only this time he shoots. And of course he hits his mark. The walker goes down. _My _walker.

Mouth open, I run the last few seconds back through my mind. What did I do wrong?

Dad goes to the dead-dead corpse and, since it's safe to talk again, I blink and whisper, "What'd you do that for?"

Dad yanks out his arrow. "Decided I didn't wanna risk the gunshot."

But wasn't he planning on letting me have a rifle to hunt with before? And we're fast, we can get out of an area before the walkers show up. "But you told me to shoot it," I remind him slowly. There's no way I could have misread that, and he let me go through all the motions before stopping me and everything.

"Yeah, then I changed my mind." He's coming back to me. His eyes are over my head.

"You –" I start as he passes me, but the other words catch because I'm confused and a little mad and a little worried because he avoided looking at me and he sometimes does that when he's mad, and so finally I just point at the walker and stutter out, "You didn't cut off the ears!"

He doesn't even turn. "Don't want 'em. C'mon."

He's being short. And he doesn't explain, of course. Doesn't explain any of it, his tone or the ears or my gun. Ask him why a snare has to be tied a certain way, or how to build a fire without matches, or how to tell how long it's been since a print was made, my Dad'll tell you everything you need to know. That's how it is with me, at least. But as far as what's going on his head? Feelings, not facts? Never. Never an explanation. And sometimes, sometimes that really gets old.

**. . . . .**

**A.N.: Short chapter, I know. But there will very likely be a new chapter of "Little Bit" up before my day's out, so hopefully that will make up for it.**


	26. Talking by the Campfire

**A.N.: Sorry about the faulty updates. My Internet's been mean to be and the documents haven't been downloading properly. Hope you like.**

**. . . . .**

Sleeping's harder than it used to be. I've been in the tent for an hour now. I've tried inside of my sleeping bag and on top of it. I've tried on my belly, on my back, on my side. Every which way, basically. And I've tried counting down from a hundred and I've tried taking deep breaths and I've even tried counting sheep in spite of that never helping me before. Nothing works, and finally I accept that there's just too much in my head for it to shut down.

And what's in my head, it's not about my dad and the walker from yesterday. It's not about kind of wanting to talk to Carl. It's not even about Randall, who should be my main concern right now, since Rick and Shane took him out today and were supposed to let him go but instead brought him back because it turns out he already knew where the farm is (so it doesn't matter that he was blindfolded on the way here) and if he meets back up with his group he could lead them to us and they might attack because Rick and Hershel and Glenn took down three of their men. Now we – or, the others, I guess – have to figure out what to do with Randall. I got all of this from Dale when I brought him some meat earlier tonight, and I relayed the message to my dad, and he got this scowling look on his face and said we'll head up there and see what's going on in the morning. And I did think about all of that, all of the Randall stuff, for a while. I asked Dad what our other options are – aside from letting him go and making him into one of us, I mean – and he said we'll worry about it tomorrow. Then he sent me to bed, and the moment my head hit the pillow, Randall stopped being my main concern. Until now, he's been in the back of my mind.

And what's been at the front of my mind?

My mom.

I don't know why.

I roll out of my sleeping bag.

When I get outside, my dad's sitting on a log and his back is to me. I stop. Dad likes to stare at the fire when he's thinking. Sometimes he does it for a really long time and he barely moves.

I edge forward. "Dad?"

He twists his head around but otherwise doesn't move from his slouched-over position. "Why ain't you in bed?"

"Can't sleep."

After a second he gives me his _come here_ head jerk. I mind, going over and sitting down beside him and letting his arm settle around me the way it always does. His arm is strong and it almost never fails to make me feel a little less scared or mad or sad or nervous or whatever bad feeling I have at the moment, if there is one. Which there usually is, lately.

I rest my head on Dad and there's nothing but the crackling of the fire for a long time.

I break the silence on a whim. "Did you ever take Mom huntin'?"

"No."

Short answer. Like always, when it comes to Mom. Don't know why I even try.

But then he sighs. ". . . Took her campin' once. Just for the hell of it."

"When?"

"'Bout a month after we got together."

"She hate it?"

"'Course she did."

I smile a little. "She hated dirt. And bugs."

A pause.

"Dad? How'd you ask her to marry you?"

" . . . You don't really wanna talk 'bout that, do ya?"

In answer, I tilt back my head so we're eye-to-eye, almost literally.

"Fine," he says, and I return my head to normal. "It wasn't nothin' special. You were a month old and we'd just put you down for the night and your mom told me if I asked her right then she'd say yes."

"She'd _finally_ say yes," I correct.

"You hear this before?"

"From Mom. I just wondered how you remembered it."

He's quiet.

My voice gets very soft for my next question. "Why'd you get divorced?" Mom didn't talk much about that part of things.

Dad, he uses the arm not around me to rub his face. "'Cause we didn't wanna be married no more."

"Did you love her?" I hesitate. "She loved you. Even after you broke up. She told me so . . . Did you?"

He takes a long time to answer. "Yeah."

I knew that. "Then why didn't you stay married?"

"'Cause it wasn't workin'."

"But you loved each other."

"Didn't mean it was workin'."

I swallow. "Was it 'cause of me?"

"Sydney, you know better'n that."

"Then why?"

"It's grownup stuff."

I sit up straight. I rotate on the log and look straight at him. "Dad. I'm not a little kid anymore."

He snorts.

"I'm _not_."

"No," he says to the fire, "I know you ain't."

I wait.

Finally, without looking at me, "Even 'fore your mom and I got married, we fought more'n anything else. That's just how it was . . . It wore us down."

They fought even after they got divorced, though. He's right, that's just how they were. That was their normal.

"But . . ." I press my lips together and fidget, words scrambling around in my head, making it hard to grab onto the right ones. "You and Mom . . . Even after you weren't together no more, whenever you'd fight, you didn't stay mad. Not for long."

"Baby girl, it's like I said –"

And he's talking in a short way but calling me _baby girl_, so he's not mad, but he's done talking about this, that's what the short part means, and I slump my shoulders.

"– it just wore us down."

My fingers flutter against each other, my palms touching. I stare at these wiggling fingers.

He wants to change the subject? Fine.

"Why didn't you let me shoot the walker yesterday?"

He grimaces. "I'ma say this one more time. I didn't wanna risk the gunshot."

I take a deep breath and look right at him. "I don't think that's the truth." That sounds better than _You're lying, _I think.

Dad turns from the fire and gives me a look that's almost sad. "Then I probably got my reasons, don't I?"

I get annoyed then, no matter how almost-sad he looks, because he's not being fair. "Dad, you just said I'm not a little kid. You can tell me. Was it because you thought I'd miss? 'Cause you know I got good aim –"

"I said I got my reasons, Sydney Rose."

I shut up. But my fists are tight. He sees this and reaches out and makes me uncurl one of them. He holds my hand flat in his. This makes mine look extra small. A second passes and then he rubs his thumb across my knuckles. "Bite marks," he mutters. "Thought I told ya to quit that?"

I don't say anything. My other fist is still clenched, whether he likes it or not.

"Syd," he says after a little while of him just looking at our hands, "You like it out here?"

I shift around. "You mean at our camp?"

He nods.

Now it's me just looking at our hands for a little while, because I know what answer he wants, and I have to search my mind to find an answer that suits him and me both because I don't want to lie to him. Finally I land on, "I'm gettin' used to it."

"You know I'm just doin' it for –" He stops.

"What?"

"Nothin'."

I frown. My one fist? Still tight. And now I chomp on the inside of my cheek, too. My dad, he can really get me angry sometimes.

He stands and pulls me to a stand, too. "C'mon. I'll tuck ya in."

He hasn't tucked me in since we left the survivors' camp. I figured he thought I was too old now. But, secretly – really secretly – I've kind of missed it. So I let him lead the way into the tent.

Slowly I let my fist come undone. But there's blood in my mouth and I can't change that now.

He should tell me more. About my mom and moving here and the walker and everything else I ask that has something to do with me. _He should tell me more._

My heart says it might need him to.


	27. Bloody Fists

I feel uneasy from the moment my dad tells me he's going to talk to Randall.

It's morning, and I'm sitting at the picnic table with Carl, finally teaching him five-card draw – he asked – and my dad just comes over from the other grownups and says he's going to the shed, where Randall's kept. The first thing I think is also the first thing I say: "Why you?"

Don't get me wrong, my dad's really smart, but I can't see him being able to pull information out of Randall any better than Rick or Shane could – and that's what they need, information, information about Randall's group and what they could do to us. And I thought my dad and I weren't even a part of all of this? Isn't that what he told me?

But Dad just tells me to stay put and then heads off in the direction of Randall's shed. The wings on his vest are blocked out by his crossbow.

I exchange looks with Carl. He's wearing his dad's sheriff's hat and his head looks too small. But his face tells me he doesn't know anything, and the unease inside of me grows.

. . . . .

"So what you gonna do?" Lori's asking later as she kneels by the fire and pours Carl some hot chocolate. "I think we'd all feel better if we knew the plan."

"_Is_ there a plan?" Andrea adds from behind me. Carl stoops to get his drink from his mom and I shake my head at her because I don't think Dad would like me taking food from them.

Lori and Andrea, they're both talking to Rick, who's standing almost directly across the fire from me, right next to Shane. Both of them wear very solemn faces. The women mean what's the plan about Randall, which I'm curious about, too, because I think they kind of have their hands tied.

"We gonna keep him here?" asks Glenn. Maggie's beside him. I think they hang out a lot now. I think they might even be boyfriend-girlfriend. But that's not important, Glenn's question is, and it's what I thought would be best all along, but will Rick . . .?

"We'll know soon enough," Rick says now, and he and Shane are both looking into the distance, and so I do, too, and it's my dad. My dad's coming back up here.

"Boy there's got a gang," he says as he gets close.

There's something wrong with his fists.

"They got heavy artillery and they ain't lookin' to make friends."

His fists are bloody.

No, no. Please, no.

Dad says something along the lines of that if Randall's group gets here we'll all die or wish we were dead, and I know I should care, but I can't take my eyes off of the knuckles of the hand wrapped around the crossbow strap. I can't take my eyes off the blood, the torn skin.

I've never seen my dad's hands look like that before. I've seen Merle's look like that, but never my dad's. And I know exactly what it means and my stomach twists all around and I feel like I might throw up but I can't seem to make myself move.

"What did you do?" Carol says. Her voice sounds the way my belly feels.

Dad's eyes cross over her, then – just for a really small second – me, and finally they dart to his hand. "Had a little chat."

A little chat. A little chat.

"No one goes near this guy!" orders Rick. My dad steps up to me. He prods at my shoulder and it's all I can do not to shrink away from his ripped-up hand. My dad's hands aren't supposed to look like that. They're supposed to be scarred and rough, but not bloody, not unless he's gutting an animal. Bloody hands can't stroke my hair or rub my neck. I don't look at Dad but I glance at Carl, and what I see manages to make everything even a little worse.

Because Carl – who stomped up to camp last week looking like he wanted to kill my dad – now has on a slight little smile as he moves out of our way. A slight little smile directed at Dad. Dad with the Bloody Fists.

Carl looks like my dad's just become his damn hero.

Dad's walking. I have to walk with him.

As we go, I hear Rick say, "We have to eliminate the threat."

And then I hear Dale say, "You're just gonna kill him?"

And I stop short just in time to hear Rick announce, "It's settled. We'll do it today."

"Hey."

My dad. He's a few steps in front of me now. He gestures for me to come on. As if everything's normal. As if he didn't just –

Does he really expect me to just pretend I don't get it?

There's nothing I want to do less than go back to camp with him right now. I hate that, I hate all of this, but it's the truth.

"Can I stay here for a while?" I say, and I have to clear my throat because my voice sounds strange. "Carl and I were gonna hang out."

That's a lie, we didn't make plans. I almost never lie to my dad. Almost never, ever, and not just because he'd be mad. I don't like to. Never had to, really, until now.

My dad wants to say no, I can tell. But his bloody hand tightens and loosens around his crossbow strap, and I know, I know he knows I get what happened. "We go huntin' in a half-hour," he finally says. His voice is gentle. Which is wrong right now. I'd rather he yell and fit in with the bloody fists.

I nod, though. He heads off to our camp – our camp, a lonely speck of stone way in the distance. A lonely speck of stone I'm supposed to be getting used to.

I feel numb again. Except for the lump in my throat. That hurts.

. . . . .

Carl's already going off with Shane by the time I step back up to the fire. I don't chase after him. I don't have the energy, and anyway, I can't shake the image of that _You're awesome _look he gave my dad, the look that for once – I hate this – for once maybe my dad didn't deserve.

The campfire has emptied of people but it's surrounded with folding chairs and I claim a blue one and pull my legs underneath me. I hug myself.

Thing was, that wasn't my dad.

My dad doesn't do that. People think he does sometimes, but he doesn't.

My dad? My dad tucked me in last night. My dad's the one who cleaned up my knee after I fell in the woods and who's cleaned up hundreds of scrapes before that one. He's the one who gave up a hunting trip to take care of me when I got sick on one of his weekends when I was seven, even though Mom offered to come pick me up. Even before the walkers, Dad was the one I wanted most when I was upset, because I'm safe when he's holding me and everything's going to be okay no matter how bad whatever it is feels like. My dad's hands _are_ scarred and rough but they're still so gentle and comforting, and I love that, I love him, I love my dad, and my dad doesn't – he's not supposed to –

_Bloody fists._

Fists that beat up a guy who's going to die today. Who's going to be _killed _today. Even though people aren't supposed to kill other people.

Is that what we have to do now? Is that what we have to do to stay alive? Is that just how it is now?

Because_ I don't like that!_

That lump in my throat grows, but I'm not going to cry. I can't. Not here. And anyway, there are footsteps behind me.

I gulp and turn, my face in a half-scowl that hides my trembling chin, and it's Dale. Way, way off behind him, in a field, I see Rick. Dale was talking to him, I think.

I grit my teeth, take a breath. "Rick gonna kill him?"

Dale sees me, shakes his head, raises his eyebrows for a moment like he's simply not sure, but he says, "Not if I can help it." Then he stops, readjusting the rifle on his shoulder. The hands around the strap of the rifle are nice and healed and not bloody at all. Oh, look, he's smiling at me, Dale. That's nice. I like Dale, and I miss Papaw . . . Papaw was almost as good as Dad when I was upset, because he was really strong, too, and I loved nesting in his arms . . . I want him here. But he's dead.

Dale's talking, I should listen. ". . . going to talk to everybody before sundown. If I can get them to see reason, Randall will be fine."

I can't take my eyes off of Dale's knuckles. His perfect knuckles. "You gonna talk to my dad?"

"I am."

"He said he didn't want to be part of the camp anymore."

"Yeah," Dale sighs, "That's what Carol told us."

"But he came up here today. He . . ."

Dale comes up to me and reaches over the back of the chair to put his hand on my shoulder. I look up at him and his eyes are kind. "Your dad is a very, very smart man. And I think he's a _good_ man."

"He is," I say immediately, eyelids fluttering, fighting back the blurriness building up in my vision. And I'm so grateful to Dale in this moment, so grateful, because he _gets _that, I'm not the only one.

"And I know he really loves you. Now, I can't explain exactly why he did what he did, but you have to remember that one mistake doesn't define a man."

I _really_ like Dale. And I nod, swallowing. He gives me another smile and squeezes my shoulder – so much like Papaw – then he goes into the RV.

Me, I sit by myself for a moment, thinking. I like what Dale said and I try to hold onto those words, I try, but they keep slipping away and getting drowned out by the images of blood and ripped skin and the sounds of punching and other bad, bad things. And I realize I can't sit here by myself or I won't like where my head ends up. So, I take a deep breath, get tough, and slide out of the chair. I head the way Shane and Carl did. I could use an almost-friend right now, even if he may be a little twisted.

. . . . .

"Look, man, this . . . this is grownup stuff, alright? You just – just let us handle this."

That's what Shane is saying to Carl when I find them. They're not far off from the shed, and Shane leaves Carl to head over there. Carl stands with his shoulders slumped and I step up close. I think I'm sneaking up on him, because I'm getting better at silent footsteps.

"I hate it when they say things like that," I say, and, yes, he jumps a little but tries to hide it.

"I know." He looks after Shane. "I really wanna see the guy."

"You've seen him."

"I didn't get a good look. I wanna see what he looks like now."

There's an excitement in his voice I don't like. "Why?"

"You wanna come?"

I narrow my eyes, look from him to the shed, at Shane – and Andrea, Andrea's out in front of the little building, too – and I say, "To see Randall?"

He nods. His blue eyes are lit up and he's smirking, and why, I don't get _why _. . . Why would he want to go, and why should I? To see someone who might be dead tonight? Killed by our own people, by Carl's dad? To see what my own dad did to Randall?

I don't say any of that because my voice would tremble.

"Shane and Andrea are right there." I'm whispering, even though no one is close enough to hear. "We can't just walk in."

"I know another way." A proud grin breaks out over Carl's face.

I give him a long, long look. "No. We'd get in trouble. Big time."

"You scared?"

Just like that, we're back on the highway, trying to get a bundle of weapons away from a body, and I'm mad. "No! But –"

"Then _come on_."

I don't want to see Randall. I don't, I don't. And I'm not feeling very fond of Carl right now. But I still hate the idea of him thinking I'm chicken.

So really, really, what can I do but go with him?


	28. Makes Me Afraid

There's a tree at the back of the shed and Carl swears it'll be really easy to climb. He and I circle around – out of view of Shane and Andrea – and come back to this tree, me checking over my shoulder the whole time. If Dad catches me – away from a grownup and sneaking in to see Randall – I'm as good as dead. I can feel the thrill of being bad _rolling_ off of Carl, though. But I bet if he gets caught the worst he'll get is a talking-to, so it doesn't really count.

I go up the tree first to prove to Carl I ain't scared. He was right, it's really easy – strong branches close together, and just a short ways to the place I need to be, where the roof juts out from the shed. When I reach this piece of roof, I step onto it very carefully, and the shingles creak but they feel sturdy and so I let go of the tree and trust the roof with my weight. It holds up, thank God. I'm really easy to see now, I'm sure, so I get down on my hands and knees and crawl across this little slice of roof, hoping I'm at least a little more hidden than when I'm on my feet. The wall I reach at the end of my crawl isn't really a wall – the wood making it up is pretty far apart, enough that I can easily see through and just as easily slip right in. I glance back at Carl, who's on all fours, too. He still has that spark in his eyes, I can tell even from here. I roll my own so he knows how silly all of this is, in spite of the fact that my heart's beating really fast and everything I have tells me this is a dumb idea. And that I know so much better.

I slide into the shed.

The next thing I know, Carl and I are side-by-side on a loft, listening to Andrea and Shane's voices and looking at the teenager in the shadows below us. At first he's peering out through some cracks in the door, watching the grownups, his hands chained to the wall behind him, but as soon as Carl sits down – only a second before I do – sawdust rains down on Randall and his eyes come up to our perch. I stiffen, because I didn't want him to see us. I don't want to have any sort of personal connection with Randall and I hate him for looking into my eyes right now. My face stays normal though, calm and cool, and I finish sitting and cross my legs all casual, like I do stuff like this every day.

"Hey," Randall whispers. He looks at the door again – checking the grownups, I'm sure – but then turns his attention back to us, grinning, which is wrong.

His face is beat to hell.

"That's a sweet hat," he tells Carl. "I'm Randall. You guys got names?"

Neither of us replies. My eyes are all narrowed and maybe mean, even though as I look down at Randall's bruised and bloody face I'm filled to the brim with something that feels an awful lot like guilt. It doesn't help that Randall keeps grinning like an idiot. And that there's such a desperate note in his voice.

"The sheriff guy – that your dad?" Randall asks Carl. "I like him. Yeah, he's a good guy, I can tell." His eyes shift to me. I wish he'd stop looking at me. "What 'bout you? You his kid, too?"

He doesn't want to know whose kid I am. I let him think what he will.

"Your guys' mom out here, too? You're – you're lucky you still got your family . . . I lost mine." Here his grin fades.

And that's when I'm fully, completely, can't-recover-from-it hit with this terrible, consuming pity for Randall, pity as strong as anything, pity that might make me double over if I weren't so tough. But Randall, he's tied up and he's been beaten by my father and he's been sentenced to die at sunset and he doesn't even have family to miss him and it's pathetic and sad and not what people should do to people and Rick can't kill him, he _can't_ . . .

"Hey, I-I don't know what people been sayin' 'bout me, but –"

Carl starts to move. I pull myself out of my heavy thoughts and feelings to give him a _What are you doing? _look, but he's already standing and walking along the loft edge.

"I didn't do nothin'!" Randall's saying. "I swear!"

Carl's climbing down from the rafters, climbing down a ladder and into the makeshift prison cell below. What's his plan here? Randall's tied up and I don't think he's dangerous, but Carl didn't say –

I'm following him, though. God, why the hell am I following him?

To protect him.

From what?

Randall continues, "Your dad was gonna let me go, till his friend started fightin' with him."

Shane?

"It got pretty bad."

My foot touches on the first ladder rung.

"I-I was kinda worried."

I can't think about what that means, not right now. I step down three times and then jump past the last two ladder rungs to land beside Carl. Carl, who's slowly stepping closer to Randall now. Of course he is. Idiot.

"My camp," Randall says, "We got lotsa supplies. You guys help me, I'll take you and your folks back to my people." He's bending over a little bit now, his eyes wide, yes, he's fighting hard for his case. Like a lawyer. "We'll take good care of you. Keep you safe."

I creep along with Carl, my eyes switching between Randall's face and Carl's feet. How far is Carl going to get? My gaze rises to his face, which is so focused, so intense, and I got no idea what he's thinking . . . what he wants to do . . . and that makes me very nervous.

"You guys just gotta – you just gotta help me get outta here, okay?"

I look at Randall again. The sunlight falls through the top of the shed and lights up little strips of him. One of his eyes is swollen halfway shut.

"Just – just help me pick these locks or, or find the key, okay?"

We can't do that, Randall. We can't. But Dale, Dale might be able to save –

"C'mon, please? _Please?"_

Randall jerks on his chains the same time the shed door swings open. It's Shane, looming in the doorway like a monster in a story.

"_What the hell're you doin' in here_?" He bounds up into the shed, shoving Carl away from Randall, and I instinctively step back with my almost-friend, and Shane's mad, Shane's mad. But his eyes are on Randall now, not on one of us kids. "What did you say to them? Man, _what did you say to them?"_ And then Shane has Randall pinned to the wall, holding onto his throat like he might crush his neck right then and there, and Carl and I both inch back more, the mood in here spinning out of our control and me not liking it at all.

"I didn't say _nothin'_ –"

Shane's gun is out. Oh, God. "I will shoot you where you sit –"

I don't want to see that –

"Okay, Shane," says Andrea, Andrea's in here, good, good. "Not now!"

Shane's telling Randall to open his mouth. Stop, Shane, no, and Andrea keeps saying his name, telling him to cut it out –

"You like talking, man?" Shane's pressing the gun right into Randall's lips. _"You like talking?"_

"Back off!" yells Andrea.

Then Shane puts his gun away and grabs Carl's arm and my shirt and yanks. "Get your asses out this door, _let's go!_" That quick, one type of fear changes to another.

Out in the sunlight, Shane asks what the hell we're doing and basically tosses Carl and me away, and my feet stumble along the grass for a second. Being too proud, I don't say what comes to mind, but Carl does me a favor by including me in the plea I would give if I did: "Please don't tell our parents!"

I find my footing and face Shane, chin up. Even though he's really, really terrifying right now and the idea of my dad is even more terrifying.

Shane's breathing heavily. "Guys, that ain't cool, you could've gotten hurt in there –"

"We can handle ourselves," I say steadily. Surprisingly steadily. Why did I say that? My hands have made themselves into fists, and I wish they would break that habit, I don't think it ever helps me.

Shane looks at me like I'm crazy. "Let me tell you two somethin'. You do not go near him again. Do you hear me?" His eyes drill into Carl, me, Carl, me, Carl for a while, and then Shane starts away. "Damn it –"

"You won't tell our parents, will you?" Carl asks his back.

"Carl, man . . . It ain't about gettin' in trouble, okay?"

It ain't _just _about getting in trouble, but . . .

"A guy like that –" Shane points at the shed – "He will say anything to you. He will – he'll try to make you feel sorry for him, he'll try to make you get your guard down."

My fists unroll. I unwind but not really in a good way. So . . . did I just eat right out of Randall's hand? Fall for a stupid trick? Should I not feel bad, not at all? Do I _want_ that?

"You let your guard down out here, people die." Shane's just paying attention to Carl now, which is fine by me, because his eyes are all serious and I'm pretty sure I'm blushing anyway since I may be stupid and I don't want Shane to notice all the red in my skin.

"Now just . . . Do me a favor, guys, go find your parents. Go on."

And Carl and me, we don't need to be told twice. But we've just darted off a few paces when Shane calls Carl's name and we both stop, me a little ahead of Carl. Shane's not looking at him, but he says, "Quit tryin' to get yourself killed, man."

His voice wobbles a little.

. . . . .

"Did you see him?" Carl asks once we're far enough from the shed, closer to the house and the empty porch.

"Yeah," I huff back, slowing from a run, checking the shed before looking at Carl. "He was pissed off. If he tells my dad –"

"I don't mean Shane. I mean _Randall_." Carl's smiling again, and it's that same smile he was giving my dad back at camp, only stronger. He shakes his head like he just can't believe it. "Your dad really pounded him, huh?"

I stare at him. Long enough that that smile fades, slowly, bit by bit, and I watch as the understanding that he's said something wrong crosses over his face, and I wait until he has his mouth open to ask about it or apologize or whatever he plans on doing before I turn on my heel and walk away.

"Sydney?"

I don't answer. I keep moving. I have to go hunting with a man with bloody fists who Carl thinks is a hero.

. . . . .

About a third of the way across the field between the main camp and Dad's and my camp, I realize that there are two figures standing beside the chimney, instead of just one. I don't have to squint to know the second person is Dale, it _must _be, and I run the rest of the way over. The run feels good.

" . . . if he didn't figure that out, it's 'cause he didn't wanna," My dad's saying as I reach them a minute later, panting. "It's like I said. Group's broken." His eyes come to me. "You're late. Let's go." Dad turns from Dale and heads to the woods.

Dale turns too, facing the house again. His movements are slow and I can tell by his face that the talk with my dad didn't go his way. We trade looks, and for once Dale doesn't smile at me. No, he looks really sad, and I hate that, and I want to talk –

"Sydney!"

I flinch and move past Dale. Talking's not going to happen, not anytime soon. A look behind me shows him beginning the walk back, and a look ahead of me shows Dad at the edge of the woods, waiting impatiently. I get right up next to him, next to my dad, but he starts to move again and I stop, because I've caught sight of those fists again and those fists shouldn't belong to my dad and I can't, I can't do this, I can't.

"Dad."

I can sense and see his frustration as he halts yet again and looks at me. He really wants to get in the woods, I know, deep in the woods where the others would never come. He needs that sometimes. Me, too, but not now. Not with him.

"Is it alright if I don't go?"

Surprise comes over his face, followed by this stern look he's taken to lately. "No, it ain't. You gotta hunt, Syd, you need to know this stuff. Now c'mon."

"I know how to hunt."

His hand comes out, grips a tree. "Watch it, Sydney."

And it's so wrong. So, so wrong, him trying to act _right_. Like he should tell me how to behave, how to treat him, when he . . . when he just did what he did to get those raw knuckles of his.

I think he catches me eyeing them, those stupid knuckles, because he removes his hand from the tree, flexes his fingers, and lets the arm fall to his side. "Look," he says, voice gone soft and his stern look put away, which I guess is nice, "I shoulda told you what was gonna go down. What I's gonna do. But it had to be done. And he ain't a good guy, Little Bit."

I saw Randall, though. Young, no more than a few years older than Carl. A gap in his teeth and a desperate voice. No family. Beat up and chained. Begging. And I know Shane said that _guys like that_ know how to make you feel sorry for them, but maybe _guys like that _have good reason for it, that's possible, right? And thinking about Randall and his face and my dad's hands all together gives me the courage or the foolishness or _something_ to look my dad straight in the eye and say, "But _you're_ supposed to be a good guy."

Not even the birds sing then. The insects don't buzz and the wind doesn't blow.

"What?"

The lump in my throat, that clay-like ball that I can't gulp away, it comes back and it's mean about it. "You beat him up, Dad. Bad enough to do that to your hands."

"Sydney –"

"He was chained up! He couldn't even defend himself, it was – it was _wrong –"_

"How'd you know he was chained up?"

I'm sort of aware of the back of my neck getting really hot, but it doesn't matter much for some reason. My dad steps forward and his face is close to scary but that doesn't matter much either. "Sydney? How'd you know he was chained up?"

"I snuck in," I say, my voice all calm. "Through the top of the shed."

My dad looks at me for a while. He's very still, up until he throws his crossbow down in a way that can't be good for it. After that, he slams his hand into the tree next to him, hard enough that I bet it's painful, but all his face shows is a bad, bad sort of anger. _"Why the hell would you do that?"_

If I'd told him about Carl, I could say because I didn't want Carl to think less of me. Bad answer, but better than the one I'm left with. "I don't know."

He comes right up to me, wearing that same look Shane gave me earlier, the one that says _You're crazy_, but naturally it's worse on my dad, especially with him so mad. "You don't know?"

I shrug, even though he'll hate it.

"That guy's _dangerous_, Sydney! He coulda hurt you, you don't even know how bad!"

I feel so tired.

"Damn it!" Dad kicks at the ground, sending up a flurry of leaves, before turning to me with hard eyes. His jaw works, he jabs a finger at me. "You remember what I told you would happen if you did somethin' like this again?"

I remember that well. "You said you'd whip me . . . So you gonna do me like Randall? You gonna take a swing at me, Daddy, since I can't even fight back? You wanna beat me up, too?"

A tear I didn't feel coming slips from my eye as I say this and my hand comes over my mouth to push back the choking noise I'm starting to make. My dad, my dad's like a balloon with all the air coming out. Slowly, slowly, his tense shoulders relax and his face loosens up, and I think he might actually lose a few inches, somehow, and his eyes, they stay on me, and there's something very strange going on inside of them, and my chest feels something and maybe it's sorry but I'm not sure, it's hard to tell right now, and there's another tear from me.

"What you just say?"

He heard it, though. I know he did.

"Sydney . . ."

I remove my hand, take a breath that's really more of a gasp, and manage to get out, "The day Shane opened the barn? When we were at the pond? You told me I never had to be afraida you." I lift up my arm. The whole thing is shaking, but my pointer finger unfolds to aim in on Dad's left hand. On the knuckles. "_That _makes me afraida you."

Then my arm drops and so do two more tears, at the exact same time, one from each eye, and I have to sob once and it's made worse because I know more are coming, I can feel them gathering in my chest, ready to come out and take over my whole body, and I can't meet Dad's gaze but I see his feet start towards me again. "Baby girl –"

His hand touches my arm and I back up, and it's just one step, but it might as well be a mile and I know it the second I move. I stare, I stare at the ground, the mass of dirt and leaves and plants all running together, and I don't even care about getting a spanking, I just –

"Please don't make me go huntin'."

One, two, three, four, five seconds, and then my dad's moving, and he's not moving closer. I rub my eyes and face and blink a lot and force myself to look up and I do that just in time to see Dad getting his crossbow off the ground and slinging it onto his back, against the wings. My favorite vest. He walks away then, off into the woods, off into the deep where he can't be found.

Have I mentioned how good my legs are? My legs are very good legs. They get me all the way back to our tent before I completely break down, all alone and confused and tired, tired, tired. And afraid of a lot of things.


	29. Walker in the Swamp

Hours pass in a dreamy, foggy way.

When I finally raise my head from my pillow, the light in the tent has traded its yellow, morning tint for a more orange color, an afternoon color, and this throws me off for a second. I wouldn't have opened my eyes and noticed at all, if the footsteps outside hadn't pulled me from my sulking. Because that's what I've been doing – sulking. I hate it, but it's true.

The footsteps. Yes, there're footsteps and there's rustling. I push myself up, hand skimming over my waistband, fingertips touching on my gun and my knife. Those footsteps aren't my dad's, no, they're too light, which means whoever it is probably isn't a threat, but my hand still comes to a stop on my sheathed knife. Tears, tears, wipe away the tears. The skin of my arm is dry and scratchy against my damp face.

I go outside, into the fresh air. I move around the tent, my steps silent, and see him right away. Carl. Standing by my uncle's motorcycle. Going through one of the bags hooked on the side, his back to me.

My hand falls from my knife but anger explodes all through my body. "What're you doin'?"

Carl whips his head around, caught off guard because I'm sneaky, and there are two things in his hands. One is my dad's gun. The other is a picture.

I should care more about the gun but at this moment I don't.

"Put that back!" I snap even as I run up to him. I grip his wrist before he can move, take the picture – Mom and Dad and me on a quilt when things were happy – and shove his arm away before I delicately fold up the photo again, barely looking at it, because I don't want to remember the happy stuff right now.

"Your mom was pretty."

"How 'bout you mind your own business?" My teeth are tight together as I tuck the photo carefully back into the bag. "Who do you think you are? Comin' out here, goin' through our stuff . . ."

"It's your _dad's _stuff."

"Shut up, Carl." Something glints in his hand – the gun. My dad's gun. I make a grab for it. "Put it _back_ –"

He dodges away from me, grinning like this is all some big game. "Can't. Gonna need it if I'm goin' out in the woods."

"What? You're not goin' out in the woods, Carl."

"Yeah, I am."

"Give me back my dad's gun."

"You want me to go out there without a gun?"

I stare at him. First he wanted to to see Randall, now this . . .

He jerks his head to the side, the same way my dad does all the time, and I wonder if Carl picked it up from him. "C'mon. Come with me."

"My dad's out there right now."

"You know where he is?"

"Carl –"

"Let's just go where he isn't."

I hate seeing my dad's gun in Carl's hand. It looks too big and wrong and it doesn't make me feel safe at all, the way it's supposed to.

"Aren't you sick of the grownups treating us like we can't do anything?"

I meet Carl's eyes. That spark from before? When we were going in to see Randall? That's gone. But there's something deeper, something more intense there now. Something that makes me feel almost nervous but also pulls at my chest, and it's good, it's exciting and feels like life, and I need that feeling right now.

"Why do you do this stuff?" I ask Carl, my poker face on even though I've already decided to go with him.

Carl, Carl just smiles at me.

. . . . .

Yesterday my dad and I went to the swamps that are upriver, so today he'll go the opposite way, and that's why upriver is where I lead Carl. The whole time I'm thinking that I _must_ be suicidal, but I just have to keep on riding on that good feeling in my stomach that I can't quite put my finger on.

"What're you hoping to get from this?" I ask him over my shoulder, swinging myself around a tree and then jumping off of the rock that's appeared under my feet.

"I don't know. You go out in the woods all the time . . . Guess I just wanna see what it's all about."

"It ain't about walkin' to nowhere," I mutter. A squirrel bounces through the brush and up a tree as I say this, and I watch it climb with a longing feeling. Be an easy hit from here, if I had a gun. Or my dad.

I was mean to him.

"Why were you in your tent anyway? Shouldn't you be out with Daryl?"

I focus my eyes ahead of me – the swamps are close now – and as I step over a fallen tree I almost let Carl know that I told Dad about Randall, but I stop myself because my throat starts to close up at the memory alone. I end up only saying, "We had a fight," and my voice is cool enough, I think, that Carl doesn't press any farther. He can be smart sometimes.

We reach the swamps, reach the water you can't see through and the thick, thick brush that hides all kinds of snakes and bugs. The leaves above are so crowded together that it might as well be a cloudy afternoon, and the temperature's hotter here, heat floating around with all the tiny water droplets that stick to my skin and make me itch. Really, though, I don't notice much anymore, when I don't think about it. I wait for Carl to complain but he doesn't.

My feet take me right up to the edge of the bank, above an incline about half my height that drops right into the water. There's a log on the creek, a log that's maybe twice the length of a man lying down, and this log is stretching across the water like a little bridge. I'm about to test my weight on it when I hear the growling. My eyes fly up.

A walker. Right across from me, camouflaged, its dead skin blending in perfectly with the mud on the banks. It's hanging its head. It hasn't seen us.

My hand goes back and finds Carl's sweatshirt. I press into his stomach and take a step away. Two steps away.

Then Carl pushes down my arm and steps forward.

I could kill him.

This is the point where the walker realizes it isn't alone. It lifts its head, it turns its body – it's not wearing a shirt – and its glassy, unblinking eyes find us and we're greeted with a snarl. The lips are gone from the face. Bare teeth snap at us. Hungry.

"Let's go!" I yank Carl back by his hood. It doesn't do much, but he still backs off, feet clumsy. The teeth got to him. We're going to have to run. We can get away from the walker, but we have to be fast, and Carl's going to have to follow me exactly or –

Wait. The walker's not coming for us.

Carl and I both freeze at the same time. My hand drops from his hood.

The walker looks down, seeming oddly human for a moment, even though I know it's not. It yanks its legs, it squirms around, and it growls away. But it doesn't move, and, yes, I get it – his feet are sunk into the mud. Deep.

"He's stuck," says Carl, a touch of laughter in his voice. He gets closer to the edge again, and the walker reaches out its arms. A little space and a little water and a little mud – that's all that's keeping the geek from my almost-friend.

I don't like it. "Carl, we should go."

He ignores me. He kneels down. The walker's getting angry, if walkers _can _get angry. Its snarl is more like a roar now. Those arms that are stretching forward, they're long and have vicious-looking fingers that I bet could tear into flesh like it was bread.

But the geek's legs don't move.

"It's stuck really bad," I murmur. I feel my muscles unwind, just a little. Carl picks up a rock. He flings it at the walker and the stone grazes its arm.

This is dangerous and dumb. But somehow I end up crouching down next to him. Somehow a rock gets into my own hand and I nail the geek right in the chest. It doesn't seem to hurt it at all, but I still feel what Mom would call a _rush of satisfaction_.

I really, really hate walkers.

My fingers wrap around another rock.

Carl, though, Carl stands and darts across the log, and I drop the stone. "Carl! _Carl!"_

He's right next to the walker, just a foot or two out of its reach. Carl's eyes are wide, I can tell that even though he has his dad's hat on, but he edges closer anyway. The geek's freaking out, and I remember the hanging walker from last week, when I followed Dad and Andrea, how it was so riled up because it hadn't eaten anything in so long –

"Carl, what –"

"It's okay, he can't move." And then Carl does something really stupid. He takes my dad's gun from his pocket and points it at the walker, both of his hands gripping it, his face getting all determined.

"No!" I stand but I don't go across the log. I don't make any more sudden movements, because Carl's become this wild animal, this creature that might go crazy if I spook it. "Carl, _no_. A gunshot'll just bring more walkers." I'm not about to risk that, no way, not without my dad here.

"These things killed Sophia."

"Put. The gun. Away. _Now._" Why did I bring him out here? What's wrong with me? I'm smarter than this!

The walker, it twists and turns, teeth clacking away, wanting this meal that has so nicely offered itself right up, and the gun's wobbling in Carl's hands, but he moves closer to the trapped geek, just like he was doing with Randall, and he's _way_ too close –

"Get _back!_ If you wanna kill the walker, I can – I can use my knife, but –"

A squishing noise, loud, very loud, even with the walker's growls over it. Then the walker's falling over, and its hand slaps away my dad's gun, and then Carl's on the ground, too, and I'm yelling his name, I'm yelling his name and I'm on the log and then I'm across the creek beside him and the walker has Carl's leg, and Carl's screaming and I stomp on the walker's arm twice and it doesn't let go and so I kick its head, I don't even think about it, I just kick it _hard_, and then Carl's scrambling to a stand and my dad's gun is right there, _right there_, so I have to grab it or he'll kill me for losing it and I feel dead fingers on my ankle but they don't catch me and I scoop up the gun and Carl, he and I, we run, we run, not even back over the creek, just into the woods, we _run_.

. . . . .

Five minutes later we stop to breathe. I bend over, gasping. My palm is sweaty, my grip tight on my dad's gun. Carl doesn't ask for it back. I wouldn't give it to him if he did.

I'm stupid. So, so stupid. Maybe Carl doesn't know better. But I do.

"Are you okay?" I huff out.

He nods. He's bending over, too. He shakes his head and that sort of sums the whole thing up and so I nod back. I make myself straighten. I rake my hands through my hair, which is sweaty and holds little pieces of leaves and probably some mud. I don't care. Where are we? I look around. Can't tell. But I know which direction camp is in, I think, and so I nudge Carl the way my dad nudges me and I jerk my head where we need to go. Carl follows my lead out of this forest, this stupid forest that I hate and I never, ever want to go into again.

. . . . .

Thirty minutes later we reach the edge of the woods. I find it horrible that we've somehow ended up right beside the barn, and neither of us says anything about it. It's almost sunset. How has that happened? My dad'll be back from hunting by now, probably long back. He'll have seen that I'm not at our camp and not at the main camp, either. Great. But he'll probably see that Carl's not around, so maybe he'll just assume we're off somewhere playing like normal kids . . . He can't be too mad at that . . .

Of course, he already probably hates me, after what I said earlier, so what does it matter?

I'm all bitter now.

The gun. Dad's gun is still in my hand. I look down at it like it's some strange object from another planet, and then I swallow and set it down next to a tree. I cover it up with leaves. The tree has a strange, knobby hole in its trunk, so I'll remember which one to come to. I'll somehow have to find time to sneak the gun back to my dad's motorcycle. I'll have to lie to him.

"They'll be talking about Randall now," Carl says, looking past the barn, to the white house than doesn't look inviting at all, even in the orange glow of the low sun. "Deciding what to do."

I nod, not up for talking. On the way back, I tried to muster up anger at Carl but it didn't happen. I just hate this whole day. And I want to go back to the tent and sleep, but no. No, I have to go talk about Randall. Because I'm a part of this, too. And I have to know if Dale's done it, if he's saved Randall, or . . .

Carl and I walk up to the house, passing the barn where The Walker Without a Doll was put down, and we're quiet. We've both had enough with walkers today.

When we get to the house, there's a heavy sort of feeling in the air. Pretty much everyone's gathered up on the porch. My dad's leaning on the railing. He eyes us.

"Let's gather up," Rick's saying now. I find Dale as he goes through the door and wish him luck.

Lori comes down to us. "C'mon, Carl. I want you to stay with Jimmy."

"But I wanna listen."

"Mm-mm. Not this time."

I climb the steps ahead of them. Most everyone's filed through the door like ants in a line, but my dad's still where he was before. "Where you been?" he asks.

I glance down at myself. I'm muddy, but not bad. Not definitely-been-in-the-swamp-bad. "Just playin'."

I don't know if he believes me. His eyes fall for a second. Now's not the time to talk about what happened before, but I know it's got to happen, and I dread it. It's not something either of us can forget about, and I'm sure I'm still in for it for sneaking in to see Randall. But right now my dad just gestures at the door. "Go with Carl."

So I won't be a part of the talk. I won't even hear what happens.

I go inside, and Carl and me end up in one of the many rooms of the Greene house, a room with an old piano my mother would've liked and two flowery couches my Nana would've loved. We're with Jimmy and Beth and neither of them says much past _hi_. But they do gather up beside Carl and me after I find the vent in the wall, the vent that – when you get right up to it – feeds you every word from the living room, where the grownups are talking life and death.


	30. Bread

The vent's low. Carl and I crouch beside it – I eventually lower onto my elbows, even though the hard floor'll give me bruises – and Jimmy and Beth soon kneel on either side of us like guards. They're older and should know better, but I guess they can't resist. Me, I know better, I do, I know it's wrong to eavesdrop, but I believe this is what my mom would call a _special circumstance._ So I listen, my left ear turned to the vent and Carl's breath on the back of my neck.

The grownups' talk is short and sad and Dale's all alone, all alone. They must be at least two minutes into the conversation when us kids start listening, and it's still not hard to catch the drift, not even then. The drift is _Kill Randall_.

_Execute_ him, they say, but that's just a fancy way of saying kill him.

I hear my dad speak just once, right after I lower to the vent. Dale says they're all talking about it – the _execution _– like it's already decided, and then my dad says Dale's been talking all day, going around in circles, and does he want to just go around in circles again?

The thing is, he's not being mean when he says that. Not really. If anything, that's his tired voice he's using, and I almost wish he'd be mad instead. Maybe because it's always been easier to disagree with him if he's mad.

Things go quickly after that, like falling dominos. Dale, Dale has no support, not until the very end. Right after he says his one last piece:

"Don't you see? If we do this, the people that we were, the world that we knew, is _dead! _And this new world is ugly, it's . . . _harsh, _it's . . . survival of the fittest! And that's a world I don't wanna live in! And I don't believe that any of you do! I can't! Please . . . Let's just do what's right."

He's crying then. When men cry, you know they're really hurt, and the sound of Dale choking up like that, the way his normally warm voice cracks like ice, it hits me hard. It makes my throat swell.

"Isn't there anybody else who's gonna stand with me?" he says. Pleads.

And that's when Andrea speaks up. Andrea, who shot my dad and who wanted to kill herself and who blamed Dale for not letting her die.

"He's right," this Andrea says to the otherwise silent room, "We should try to find another way."

I wish I'd never called her a bitch.

"Anybody else?" Rick asks. He's been steady throughout all of this. I don't think he wants to kill Randall, and I don't get why he doesn't say that . . . I don't get any of this, any of this except what Dale says, what Dale says just makes sense, because killing someone is wrong.

And no, there's no one else. No one except the ten-year-old hiding behind a wall and listening in like a spy. My dad should be speaking for both of us, but he has torn-up fists and I don't, so it's not fair, he shouldn't count as my voice. And I should have a say, I _should_.

I hear Dale walk out first. The others follow shortly after, but Dale, Dale leaves first. He says he won't be a party to it. To killing Randall. Executing. Killing.

We rise from the vent, Carl and Jimmy and Beth and me, and wait until someone comes to get us. It's Lori. I ask her where my dad is as I pass through the doorway. She tells me he'll be back soon but doesn't say anything else. I get into the living room, and it's dark because the lights are off and, outside, there's no more sunset. It's night. I go onto the porch, and it's borderline cold. I see a group going towards the campsite and I see three figures going towards the shed, and by the light of the just-woken-up moon I see the white wings on the back of one of those three figures. I stare at those wings for a while, then I turn my head. I don't want him there. He shouldn't be going. He shouldn't, he shouldn't, and I'm so _mad_ –

My eyes, they find another figure, farther away than the camp, a figure off by a fence that's in front of a foggy field. The moonlight shines on this figure, too, but instead of lighting up wings it lights up hair, hair hidden by a hat that's only dimly lit because it's tan, not white.

Just as I hear Lori and Carl come out of the house behind me, I jump past all of the stairs and run. I run away from the shed. I run past the camp. I run through the grass and over the shadowy flowers and I come up beside Dale and he doesn't jump, but that's okay, I wasn't trying to be sneaky. He has his rifle, Dale. He never goes anywhere without his rifle.

He looks old right now. I mean, he is old. But he looks really, really old. And I don't like that. Not at all.

He's by a gate, one of those gates made up of metal bars. He's resting his arms on the top bar, and I rest mine on the middle one. I lean my forehead on the bar above me.

"I think you were right," I say after a while. I'm not whispering, but my voice has decided to get lower than usual. It rasps, actually, kind of like my dad's does. "I know it don't mean much, since I'm just a kid. But I wanted you to know."

I'm not good at talking like this, even with Dale, so I keep my eyes up, high up on the stars. But then I feel his hand grip my shoulder. It's not like when my dad does the same thing, though, when he's trying to tell me it's alright or something. I can't really explain why, but the way Dale holds my shoulder now . . . I feel like he thinks I'm more than just a kid. "It means plenty, Sydney," he tells me, and his voice still holds a tremble in it but his tone is strong, almost fierce. "Thank you."

He lets go of me. We stay like this for a while, side by side in the dark mist, which is chilly and comforting all at once. It's peaceful here. I can hear the others back at camp, very faintly, but no one comes over to us. Good. Dale and me have been fighting this all along, fighting Randall's death sentence. We've lost, and we need time to mourn. Lori said that once. _We need time to mourn. _But it was about people when she said it, and me, I'm not mourning Randall, not really. I don't think you can mourn someone you don't know. But I feel a lot like I felt when I watched the CDC burn . . . Like there's something bigger to mourn, something bigger than just one life, like something's changing – like a part of the past is dying off – and there's no going back.

There should be a gunshot soon.

"You still think my dad's a good guy, right?"

"Yes. I do."

He is. He is, I know that. But I'm scared. So scared. So scared that I'm losing my dad, my dad, who jokes and winks and hugs me and takes me hunting and who is keeping that dying past alive for a little bit longer. At least for me.

Dale sighs after a few minutes of this, of us standing still and quiet. I look up. He's smiling at me. His eyes are wet, but he's smiling. "I'm gonna go for a walk. You'd better stay here. I'm sure your dad wouldn't want you to go off far."

My dad would likely be fine with it as long as I was with Dale, but I don't say this because I think Dale wants to be alone. I get like that sometimes. Dale steps through the gate, which creaks as he opens and closes it. The chain that locks the gate clangs and clinks as Dale works with it, and then I'm watching him walk off, off into the field, off into the fog. When he gets pretty far away, all small and black, I lean my head down and watch the dirt instead. Tears gather in my eyes. I feel lonely. I feel . . . betrayed, sort of. By Dad? By the group? I don't know. I want my mom. My mom would have sided with Dale and won everybody over, my dad included, because she was such a good lawyer and she knew how to argue. I miss her. I miss her . . .

I should go back to the others.

No. I can't be with them when I hear the gunshot, I don't know if –

Screaming.

Deep, a man's scream. Not words, just a long yell that chases all the air from my lungs as if I'm screaming myself, but I'm not, I'm not. It's Dale, Dale, out in the field, I can't see him walking anymore and I know it's him, the scream – I can climb. I'm a good climber. That's how I get over the gate so fast. Fast, fast, I'm just fast no matter what I'm doing, like now, like now as I'm running, I'm fast fast fast, because I have to get to Dale and – and – fast. If I'm fast, I'll get there in time, time for whatever, I'm fast, I have good legs, and it's dark but it's a field so there's nothing to run into and I listen to the scream and nothing else, I follow the scream, and I run and run and run and I'm looking with hunter's eyes and running, where is he, _where is he?_ And I find Dale and he's on the ground and there's a walker on him.

Dale is screaming because there's a walker on him, and I, I, I stop, I stop, because walkers, they're dangerous –

_I've stopped because it's a walker –_

Dale's screaming words now. My name, my name. He tells me to run. Yells it, cries it, screams it. My good legs have turned bad, though, they don't move, not an inch, nuh-uh. The walker doesn't come for me, it's on Dale, Dale is on the ground and the walker is on top of him and clawing at him and Dale looks like he's trying to get the walker off but the walker doesn't go away, and the walker's hands end up at Dale's chest and the fingers rip apart the flesh like it's bread. Blood pours out of Dale and I move then because it's the only thing that makes sense, except running, and I can't do that, even if instinct says to – instinct doesn't know Dale, instinct doesn't get it. I let instinct take a scream from me but I don't let instinct have my feet, those are mine, and now I'm moving and moving fast and I ram into the walker with everything I got, and I'm strong, and the walker is slimy and cold and I never want to touch one again, but it tilts over onto its back, off of Dale, and I'm on top of it now and it snarls at me and its hands go for my throat but then they stop because my knife is in the walker's eye and then my knife is in its eye again and then it's in its eye again and both of my hands are all slippery and Dale's moaning, but the walker's not, but it could be a trick, and so my knife comes up again and goes down again but then the walker is alive and it hits me and throws me off and away and it's going to kill Dale, _it's going to kill Dale!_

No, no, no, where's my knife? No, it's not a walker. Dad. Daddy. Dad is here. Dad and I are away from the walker and Dale, and no, no, Dad, I have to see Dale, even though my hands are all wet, Dale won't mind – Dad's keeping me from going back to Dale. Dad's yelling. Dale's on the ground by the walker and Dale, Dale's hurting. Dad won't let me go. Can't he see? Can't he see Dale? There are lights nearing us, lights coming from camp and the house. Voices? The others. Good. They need to get to Dale, I need to get to Dale, and Dad won't let me go and I thrash but he won't let me go, what's he doing, what –? He's running his free hand over my arms, my stomach, my face. He's talking to me, I think. I have to listen, listen, _listen,_ and maybe he'll let me go. His words are hard to get, hard to piece together, a puzzle I don't like. What's he saying, what's he saying? Am I . . . Am I bit? No, I'm not bit, and I tell him that. I yell it even though he won't like it because I'm mad that he hasn't let me go yet and we don't have time for puzzles. But now, now his arm loosens, and I scramble away and the others are here and Dale's on the ground and we need Hershel, Hershel fixed Carl and my dad, and he'll fix Dale, and the walker is right by Dale and that's not good, so I shout at it, and I start to drag it away, the walker – slimy, slimy – but it's heavy and then I realize that the walker doesn't have a shirt and its lips are rotted off and I've seen this walker before, I saw this walker today, I threw rocks at it, and I drop the arm and I fall to my knees and I look at the group and find Carl and I wait and wait and people talk and I wait and finally Carl sees the walker as Shane is pulling it off and then Carl, Carl looks at me, and his face is full of horror, and he knows, he knows this is our fault. I'm sorry, Dale. My knees take me right up to him, to Dale, and he's bleeding so bad, there's a big hole in his chest, but Hershel's there and Hershel will fix him, and I'll help, I'll help, and oh, it's my fault, and my hands go to the wound, but there's so much blood and I pull away and I just want to do something, I have to fix this, it's my fault, and why is Hershel shaking his head? Why is Andrea wailing? Don't do that, don't do that. They're wasting time and Dale's losing blood and they need to, they need to – Dale, stop coughing like that, Dale –

Rick's gun, silver and bright like a medal I won once for the high-jump at school.

Dale making bad sounds. His face is tight together. He looks too old again.

Fingers on my shoulder. Mom. No, it's not. My mom is dead because people die, die, die, walkers kill them, people die, bullets rip through their brains and they die. The fingers are Carol's. She's tugging me, tugging me away. I'm letting her but I don't want to. My body doesn't know how to not let her tug me away, tug me away from Dale, around Dale, into the group. Over by Carl who threw rocks. I threw rocks, too, and the walker got out of the mud. Unstuck. Free. Carl didn't shoot it and I didn't either. We ran. Our fault. My fault. My fault.

Carol's trying to hold me and I shove her arms away and fall down and look through people's legs and my wet hands slide around on the grass, press into the ground, it's so cool and squishy, the ground, and I see Rick pointing his gun at Dale and then someone else has the gun. My dad. Dad. Dad kneels down beside Dale, who sounds like my Papaw. Dale's head is blocked by Dad's body. And then there's the gunshot I've been waiting for, but it's right in front of me and Randall's nowhere to be found.


	31. Best Friend

As the gunshot echoes into nothing and the sobbing around me gets worse, I understand that there's only one thing to do, and that's to go to the swamps and double-check, double-check that the walker's not there. Because maybe I'm wrong. Walkers look so much alike, just one big mass of dead people, rotting and falling away. I could be wrong. And if that walker's still there, if it still has a foot trapped in the mud, I will put that walker down. So it won't get away and kill someone and there won't be anything to be my fault. I can put walkers down now. I get up from the ground and turn myself in the right direction and I walk. How many steps do I get? Six, seven? Then Carol's beside me. "Sydney – honey –"

My mother and my Nana and my Papaw called me _honey_. Dad and Merle called me _baby girl_, Mom and Nana and Papaw called me _honey_. Carol has no right. I ignore her. Eight steps.

Her hand touches my shoulder, the same shoulder Dale held a few minutes ago. I slap her arm away. Nine steps. Ten. Carol gets in front of me, blocks my path, bends down, starts talking in a sweet sort of reasonable voice that I don't want to hear. She's wasting my time. I need to get to the swamps, I need to –

I try to move around her but more hands take hold of me from behind. Woman hands again, all thin and dainty. Patricia, she says something, and I don't care, _I don't care! _I shrug her off and try to run around Carol but she grabs me and _I have to get to the swamps _and Carol's begging and I drown her out, I ignore her, she needs to let me go or the walker in the swamps could get out and get her before I can put it down, and I'm kicking, I'm pushing at Carol, she needs to let me go and I need to get to the swamps –

A new arm wraps around my upper chest, a stronger arm, a better arm. "Hey. Hey hey hey hey," Dad says into my ear, for just me, and Carol's gone and I can't remember why I was fighting and I turn and my arms go around Dad and I hold him as tight as I can. He lifts me up. Over his shoulder, I see all of the moving shadows and the body, the body, and I make a high-pitched noise and Dad tells me not to look and I don't anymore, I press my face into his shoulder, feeling wetness between his shirt and my face. Tears. I don't remember crying. I'm not crying now.

We walk for a while. The sobs of the others fade and there's just the sound of my dad's footsteps for a long time. I like this. Then he stops and he sets me down. We're at our camp. I'm sitting on the base of the chimney. Dad starts to walk off and I grab his hand. I shake my head. "I'm just goin' to get the spotlight and some water," he tells me in his special gentle voice, "You'll see me. Baby girl, I'ma be right back."

And so I let him go and he heads to the motorcycle and he gets what he said he'd get, the big round spotlight and the half-full jug of water. He gets a rag, too, and the canteen. He comes back over to me. I'm cold. No, I'm not. But I'm shaking a lot. Dad sits next to me. My hand finds his arm, holds it. Dad turns on the spotlight and sets it in my lap, pointing at my stomach. I can't really see him but I guess he can see most of me, since it's a really powerful spotlight. Dad pours some water into the canteen. "Drink this."

I do. A little sip. I don't want more. My stomach doesn't like it.

Dad runs water over his hands and washes away Dale's blood. His knuckles are torn up but I don't care. He wets the rag. His fingers touch on my chin and he wipes my face off. I don't like it but I let him do it. I don't want to have blood on my face. But Dad has blood on his face, too, tiny drops. Specks. I can see them in the moonlight, this moonlight that lights up white wings and white hair and skin with blood on it. "Your face, too."

"Later." He's moved on to my hands. I watch as he wipes the blood off, the blood on my fingers and all the way up on my arms. A lot of blood.

"I killed it."

"Yeah, you did."

"I'm sorry. I know you didn't want me to –"

"Babe, stop it. Stop it, it's okay."

"You were – you were right to shoot him. He was, he was hurtin' . . . It was like, it was like, when you shot Buck . . ."

Dad drops the rag and grips my arms. "Darlin', stop shakin'. . ."

His voice is weird and he never calls me _darling _unless I'm really upset. Am I really upset? I am trembling a lot. It's strange, really, how much I'm trembling. It doesn't feel like me, it feels like I'm watching someone else's arms quivering around like leaves. I try to stop, I try so hard for Dad, but it doesn't work. "I – I _can't –"_

"Okay, okay, it's alright." His hands come up to my shoulders and then to my head and he puts his forehead to mine. "It's alright."

"And I'm, I'm not afraid of you."

"I know."

"I don't know why I said that . . ."

"Shh." Dad touches my shirt. "You need to change. Go on, Syd, I'll be right out here."

I go inside the tent and turn on our little electric lamp and I dig through my bag and go past my sleeping shirts, which are mostly Dad's old shirts, since I never really wear anything but normal clothes to sleep in anymore, I save time that way. I find a pair of jeans and a purple tee that has a picture of a tree on it. This shirt is comfortable, I know. I switch clothes. I put my gun next to my pillow. I should've shot the walker instead of stabbing it. I don't have my knife, it's lost now. I check my arms. I think Dad got all of the blood off. My skin's still wet.

I turn off the lamp and go back outside and Dad's changed shirts, too, changed into the one he had hanging on the chimney, I guess. I squint and I see that he's cleaned the blood off his face. That's good.

"I wanna go to bed," I say.

"Okay."

"Will you tuck me in?"

"Yeah, sweetheart."

And so it's back inside the tent and I get into my sleeping bag. It warms fast. I guess I was cold after all. Dad turns off the spotlight and turns on the lamp. It's just a little light, but we don't need much, anyway. Dad's hands press the sleeping bag in close around me and I'm comfortable. I close my eyes and he gets that I don't want him to leave, because my dad, he's smart. He runs his hand along my arm – the one part of me other than my head that's not under the sleeping bag – and I remember something.

"Randall?"

"He's alive."

"Why?"

"Rick changed his mind."

"Why?"

"Not tonight, baby girl."

Okay. But I have to tell him this. "Dale said he still thought you were a good guy. Right before."

Dad doesn't say anything. His hand goes up and down my arm and he's never been much for lullabies, but when I was little and I really, really couldn't sleep, he would hum this simple little tune that helped, and he does that now. I like it, but I don't really need it. I'm exhausted. Sleep finds me fast.

. . . . .

I watch it again in my sleep. The walker getting out of the mud. The walker ripping Dale up. The walker getting out of the mud. The walker ripping Dale up. The walker ripping Dale up. The walker I killed too late ripping Dale up.

In my dreams, I never knock the walker off of him. I just have to watch. Over and over and over. I scream his name and it doesn't help. _Dale! No! Dale!_

Something grabs me when it gets really bad. I squirm and lash out because it must be another walker. But I get pinned on the ground, and the ground's soft and slippery, and it's my sleeping bag, not the ground, and it's not a walker, it's my dad, and we're in our tent, not the field.

"Baby, it's okay – hey, hey. You with me?"

_"Daddy –"_

"I'm right here. I'm right here."

He lies down beside me and holds me tight, half of me on his chest. I'm crying and there's terror left over inside of me. "Daddy . . . Daddy . . ."

"Shh, shh, shh." He rubs my neck, smoothes my hair, draining out the fear, slowing my heart back to its normal _thud-thud, thud-thud_. One of his arms remains tight around me at all times, which is good. "You're fine . . ."

"Dale, he's –"

"I know, sweetheart, but you're okay, I'm right here . . ."

He's my best friend.

Usually when I cry, Dad makes me stop before too long. But he doesn't do that this time. I lie on his chest and cry for maybe five minutes or maybe an hour and he never says it's time to quit. He lets me get it all out, like Mom used to, and it's nice of him. I'm a mess when I'm done and I feel tired but I also feel empty, which is what I need. Empty is a lot like numb and numb is good sometimes.

Time passes. My dad keeps stroking my hair and my breath keeps coming out all quivery, and the rest of me is still quivery, too, but I can't help it, and at least I'm not crying. Neither of us sleeps, and finally Dad says, "You wanna hear more 'bout that campin' trip I took your mom on, Little Bit?"

"Yeah."

"Well, first of all, I gotta admit that Merle told me not to take her. Best piece of advice he ever gave me and I ignored it. Your mom and me, we saw a snake in the first five minutes, and you know she loved that. Wasn't even a mean snake, just a hognose, mindin' its own business. But your mom, she climbed back in the truck and didn't come out for a half-hour. I told her right then I'd take her home if she wanted, but she got all mad and decided she's gonna prove to me she could stay all night, stubborn woman that she was . . ."

Dad goes on for a while, telling me how Mom freaked out again after she found a tick biting into her, how she woke Dad up three times in the night because she kept hearing something, and how that last time she wasn't even trying to wake him up, she was just standing outside the tent with his shotgun, and it's about at that point when I fall asleep again. I have no nightmares and I wake up at dawn with Dad still holding me, and I stay there until he wakes up, too, because it's so nice and safe and nothing can touch me and I don't want the real world, I want this.


	32. Best Daughter in the World

"I'm not going."

It's bold of me, saying it to my dad like that. Not asking, not suggesting. Flat-out telling him I'm not walking down for Dale's funeral. But it's just the facts. _I'm not going._

My dad, he's already started walking towards the house when I say this, and so now he turns and gives me a look. Not a bad look, though. Close to confused, but not quite, Dad doesn't get confused very often. "Why not?"

"I just don't . . ." A chilling breeze comes and I pull his long-sleeved shirt tighter around my short-sleeved one, looking at the gorgeous, orange sunrise as I do, trying to find the right words.

Carol came up a few minutes ago and told us they already had Dale's grave ready. She didn't say it, but I understood – there's no other time we can bury Dale but at sunrise. Sunrise, the best time of the day, bright and hopeful and warm even if the air is cold. It's the only time right for Dale. But it doesn't change what I think I decided last night, in the instant it took Hershel to shake his head at Rick, when everything changed.

"I just don't like funerals," I settle on telling Dad, but I've failed, those aren't quite the right words.

"How many you been to?"

"Two." Otis's and Poppy's, my mom's grandfather. "But I still know I don't like 'em."

"Syd . . ."

I'm going to have to dig down into me, then, into that place with all the curl-up-and-moan emotions that I usually keep to myself. I take a deep breath and do it, burrowing down and pulling one particular feeling out of that place and pushing it up and onto my tongue and off. "Dad, I already said goodbye to Dale. He . . . he put his hand on my shoulder. After I told him I thought he was right."

For just a second, I think I see almost-pain go across my dad's face. But it's gone too fast for me to be sure, so I go on, because it's hard to stop something like this once you get good and started. "That was my goodbye. At least, that's what it is now."

Like me and Sophia looking through the cars on the highway with Carl. Like me and Merle playing poker an hour before he left on the supply run in Atlanta. Like me being sung to sleep by my mom the night before the night she got bit.

I don't think you have to know it's a goodbye when it's happening for it to be a goodbye later. I swallow. Tears don't come, my tears are all gone. I'm looking at the ground, my worn-out shoes. I wonder what we'll do when I need new ones. It'll happen soon.

It's quiet now, that special early-morning quiet, when only a few birds are singing and you can almost hear the light spilling across the grass and the trees and the water. "And that's how I wanna remember Dale," I mutter, feeling silly but unable to stop myself. "I don't . . . I don't wanna go, Dad." I sneak a look up at him. His eyes are off in the forest. I wonder what he's seeing out there. But he's nodding, he's nodding, and he meets my eyes.

"Okay, Little Bit. That's your call. And I'm just fine with it."

Relief runs through me.

"But you gotta go to the house. Don't want you here alone no more."

But the idea of being in the house, away from the air, the sun. My face must turn pleading right off the bat, because Dad's tightened his lips even before I say, "No, Dad, please. I wanna be out here."

"You wanna get got by a walker?"

Last night is still so fresh in my mind and so his words sting, but I know, I know he's just worried. "Please," I say again. "I got my gun."

Dad, he spits on the ground, walks in a small circle, fingers working. He hates this. But he gives me a very serious look and points at the chimney. "You're gonna sit right there. You're gonna keep your gun in your lap. Your eyes are gonna be out in them woods, and if you see or hear anything, you're gonna run like hell. That's how it's gonna be if you stay here."

Better than the house. At least here I got the space to run like hell. "I can do that."

Oh, yes, he hates this. His jaw clenches and he looks at me, not quite angrily, almost desperately, but I can't imagine myself in the house right now. It just doesn't make sense.

. . . . .

The funeral must be pretty short, like Sophia's was. Dad's back in forty minutes. He finds me just where he put me, sitting on the chimney base, holding my revolver, scanning the woods. My eyes, I admit, have gone to the sunrise a few times. But my ears have stayed sharp. And I'm all in one piece when Dad sits down beside me, shrugs off his crossbow, and puts my knife in my lap. The knife I lost last night, the knife I put the walker down with.

I put a walker down . . . It still doesn't seem real.

My sheath's in the tent. I don't feel like getting up, though. It's nice out here. I twirl the knife in my fingers and set it down beside me. "What happens now?"

"We're movin' into the house."

"All of us?"

"Yep."

"Be crowded."

He nods, staring out into the woods. He hasn't looked at me yet, not right in the eye, and it's making me uneasy. "I'm 'bout to go out with Andrea and Shane. And, uh, T-Dog, I think. Got some walkers down the road we need to take care of."

"Walkers?"

"They took down a cow."

"Oh." I look down, hating geeks. For all he's not looking at me, my dad starts rubbing my neck, which makes me relax a little, like always.

"I won't be long. You're gonna go up to their camp, help 'em start packin'."

"Okay." I'm fine with the main camp. I just need to be outside, somewhere.

And anyway . . . There's something I have to do. And my dad being gone gives me the perfect opportunity. I make myself stand, bringing my knife up with me. "I'ma go get my sheath."

But when I'm just a few steps away, I hear, "Hey." And my dad, he jerks his head, so I come back. He takes my knife and puts it next to him. He starts to play with the sleeve of that shirt of his I'm wearing, and when he finally, finally meets my gaze, I know right away I'm not going to like what he has to say.

"I gotta give you a spankin'."

I go cold. I look back at him for a few seconds, then my eyes drop to his fingers as they rub the sleeve. I find my voice and ask, quietly, "'Cause of me sneakin' in to see Randall?"

"Yeah. I said I'd do it, now I gotta. You get that?"

He's using his special gentle voice. That helps things. But not a whole lot.

"With everything that's happened . . . " Dad says, his hand dropping from the sleeve to my hand, his thumb going over the raw skin he knows I bite, "After . . . after all that, we can wait a while if ya want. But me, I'd rather just get it over with . . . What you think?"

I think I should've seen this coming. And I think I should be mad at my dad, because it would just feel more right, but I can't make myself get angry. I don't have the energy or the want-to.

After a few seconds of silence, Dad brushes some of my hair back. "Like I said, it's just fine if you wanna wait –"

"No," I murmur. The dread's the worst part. "Let's just get it over with."

His hand falls. He sighs, even though I thought this is what he wanted. "Alright."

He pulls me over his knee and I don't protest a bit. And then he wears me out.

I cry, of course. Can't help it. I thought I was out of tears, but these tears are a different kind than the ones I cried for Dale, so I guess maybe they come from a different place. After, my dad holds me and rocks a bit, like I'm little again.

"Shh, shh, c'mon now, kid . . . It's over, Syd, dry up . . ."

I press my face into his chest and tell myself to be quiet until I am.

Dad rests his head on mine. "Good girl . . ."

The tears take longer to push away than the sobs did. I just swallow a lot and hold onto Dad and eventually the stupid salty things slow down. Then, finally, once my breathing's totally back to normal and the tears are definitely gone, Dad knows, and he squeezes my side. "You good?"

"Yeah," I whisper.

He presses his lips to my forehead and then says, "Little Bit, you know I love you more'n anything."

"I love you too." I gulp one last time and look up at my dad so he knows I mean it. He grimaces, just a little, wiping off my face with the back of his hand. He doesn't like this any more than me, I've always been able to tell that, and I find myself sort of feeling sorry for him, which is weird.

"Don't be mad at me, alright?" he says. And I promise him that I'm not. It's the truth, anyway, it would be dumb to be mad at him. I deserved it. I don't tell him that, but I bet he knows I know.

Things somehow go back to normal then. Like it never happened. We walk down to the main camp and Dad tells me to be good and leaves with Shane and Andrea and T-Dog.

But no, wait. There is one thing.

Right before we leave the chimney, Dad rifles through the motorcycle bags. He does it for a while, and then he eyes me. "You seen my gun?"

And it's so hard to answer that, so hard. Because it wasn't me who pulled the gun out of the bag and took it into the swamps and almost shot –

No, no, no, no. Bad thought, painful thought.

But I can't get Carl in trouble.

So I shake my head. Widen my eyes. Pretend I'm the best daughter in the world. Hate myself.


	33. Blame and Strength

Later, I slip away from the main camp and Carol – quiet, watchful Carol – by telling her I'm going to use the bathroom. Because I lie now, that's what I do. I happen to tell this lie right as Carl starts to head over from the house. I don't want to see him.

There's no one on top of the RV. I stare at the empty space before making my way to the tree on the edge of the property, the tree with the knobby hole. I remember where it is exactly. I don't look over at the four graves when I pass them by. I get to the tree, I bend down and dig through the leaves, and the gun appears like a bad memory. It is a bad memory. No more tears, though, I'm still out of that kind. I just take the thing carefully in my hands and look at it for a very long time, the shiny blackness of it, and I wonder how I became the girl standing in these worn-out sneakers, holding her father's stolen gun.

"It was our walker."

And he followed me, damn him, he followed me.

I stand and face Carl. He has on his dad's hat. I guess he wears it all the time now. The brim casts a shadow on his face but I can still see the wet streaks, the way his chin trembles.

"Yeah." There's no life in my voice. Working but not alive. That's familiar.

"I-I should've shot it . . ." He shakes his head back and forth, back and forth, saying _no _to some question, or just to something. Like that Dale's dead and we could've stopped it.

It's my turn to talk. Right.

"I shouldn'ta let you take the gun. I shoulda stopped you." I say, all even and cool.

"I should've shot it!"

We're not supposed to yell like that. So my voice is low. "I. Shoulda. Stopped you. I knew better. I knew the swamps, I shoulda known we'd see a walker, I shoulda stopped you."

We're six feet away from each other, Carl and I, and maybe we should be closer for this talk, but I don't want him close to me. I don't want me close to him. Because he might be the only one who could understand how I feel right now, who could sense these feelings coming off of me, and I don't want that, I don't, these feelings are _mine _and he doesn't need them. He has his own. He has his own.

"I should've listened when you said we should go . . ." Back and forth, his head goes, back and forth. "Going out in the woods like that, that's, that's not me . . ."

This isn't him, either. These words, this tone. At least it's not the him he could be. But that's his call, I guess.

"I'm not like you, Sydney . . ."

Oh, God.

". . . I'm not, I'm . . . You put that walker down."

That should matter more. If I'd done it one minute, thirty seconds, ten seconds earlier than I did, it would matter more. I didn't and it doesn't and I don't say a word.

"I'm not tough like you."

Shut up, Carl.

"I-I wish I was, but –"

And I can't take it, I can't. "You wanna be like me? You wanna be tough?" My hand snaps out. The hand with the gun. I'm holding it barrel-down, the grip directed at Carl. He stares at it, wide-mouthed. What an offer, what a choice. "Take the gun," I say. "Be like me. Be tough. See how fun it is."

And is that me? Is that who I am? Am I the girl with the gun who's so damn tough?

It's blue eyes on blue eyes then. One hunter, one person who doesn't know what he's supposed to be.

That person, he starts shaking his head again. It makes me sick and satisfied and grateful all at once. "No," he says.

But my hand doesn't come back to me. The gun stays out there, waiting, ready to go with someone, it doesn't care who. "Go on, my dad can get another gun."

Best daughter in the world.

"No!"

And what am I doing? What do I want?

Carl turns on his heel, stuffing his hands into his pockets. Walking away. "Just – just give it back to Daryl!"

"Carl."

He doesn't answer and I don't chase after him. My arm relaxes, swings beside me, the gun weighing it down. It's such a heavy gun. I watch my almost-friend go, leaving me with the gun he stole, the gun I let him steal. Because he has blame on his shoulders and that gets distracting, I know.

_Almost-friend._ That term doesn't work anymore. We got a man killed together. There should be a term for that. That . . . link.

Because Dale's dead because of both of us, isn't he? Like Carl said. It was _our _walker.

The blame. I can handle that being on _my_ shoulders. I'll figure out how to. Or die trying. Merle loved that saying, _or die trying._ I'll be the tough girl Carl thinks I am. My dad's tough girl. Except I'll probably wake up screaming a few more nights. Keep staring at the spot where Dale should stand until my mind and heart play tricks on me and I see him right there, keeping watch, keeping us safe, and then I'll blink and he'll be dead again. I'll go hunting with Dad and put down more walkers, put 'em down at first glance, pretend I can make up for the one I didn't put down in time. I'll work through this.

Or not.

I don't know, I don't know, but I'm going to try. The only thing I know about me is that I'm strong enough to try.

Carl . . . Carl I worry about.

He didn't have strength just now. I know what strength looks like. I see it in my dad all the time. Carl wasn't strong just now and he wasn't like . . . He wasn't like the kid with the gunshot wound who I saw in the bed in the house, the kid whose eyes were so bright just days after he nearly died. That kid, that kid could deal with the blame.

But that boy in the distance, ducking his head and slouching those shoulders, he can't.

And I know what I have to do.


	34. Telling

I don't tell anyone after I throw up. Kids are supposed to tell a grownup after they throw up, that's just the rule, but I don't. And am I really a kid anymore? Jesus. It's my own fault, anyway – my stomach told me, it told me clearly, that it did not want that peach Beth handed me right before. But I couldn't remember the last time I ate – Dad and I both forgot all about breakfast this morning, and yesterday, meals seemed like a joke compared to what was going on with Randall. So I took a bite of the peach and forced that bite down. I took two more bites and forced them down, too. Then I dropped the peach when no one was looking, and, being as casual as I could, I walked a good ways away and puked all in the grass. Not a lot came up and it burned my chest and throat.

But I walked back, got some water, and now I'm pretending like it never happened. Because the same thing started up after Mom, and there was nothing to do but keep trying to get food in me at different times of the day for a few days in a row until I could finally hold it down. And the whole thing made Dad worry. He didn't need it then and he doesn't need it now. So even later, when he comes back and scoops me up into his arms – not like him normally, but he almost always gets this way after a punishment – I don't say a word. Even when we go and unmake our chimney camp and I get a little lightheaded, I don't say a word.

. . . . .

It's mid-morning. And I have to do this now. This might be the only time I can talk to him one-on-one. Shane. I have to talk to Shane.

I'm standing on one side of the house, sort of alone. I can hear the others just around the corner, shifting things from the cars to inside. My dad's not with them. He's fixing something, I saw him walk off with a toolbox. And Shane's not with them, either. Shane's right in front of me. He's by this mound of stuff, this combination junk heap and woodpile, and he's raiding the woodpile part, putting boards into the back of his car. Rick wants a lookout built on the windmill, if I heard right, and that's got to be what Shane's loading the wood up for. He looks busy and I don't want to –

But I have to.

Carl.

Move, feet, move. They do, and they even go at a normal pace. I take a deep breath and I pretend I'm my mom. Determined and scary and smart. With a handle on things, a good, tight handle. Confident.

"Hey, Shane?" I say when I'm close. Yes, yes, my voice is good. Down-to-business, waste-no-time. I've got this. Confident like Mom, tough like Dad, yes.

Shane glances up at me, a long board in each hand. "Hey, Sydney. Everything okay?" His eyes go above me. "Where's your dad at?"

But I didn't come here to talk about my dad. Rather not, actually. I stop a couple of yards from the open back of Shane's car, where he is now, dropping the wood in. Now's the time. Now's the time.

What did I decide to open with?

Right.

"I need to tell you something," I say slowly, and I keep my eyes on Shane, because eye contact is important, "But I need you to promise not to tell my dad."

I feel guiltier and guiltier with every word of that sentence. Shane, Shane slaps his hands together, shaking off dirt, looking down at me the way a teacher does when you might be in trouble. "Can't promise that, kiddo."

_Kiddo. _As if we're actually close. Annoyance runs through me and I find myself wondering why I ever liked Shane. And now, now I have to lay down my best card, my secret weapon.

"It's about Carl."

Shane's on his way back to the woodpile when I say this, and as the sentence gets all the way out, he stops short. His head jerks my way first, then he turns his body completely towards me and moves forward. "What is it?"

"You have to promise," I repeat. "You can't tell my dad. Or Rick or Lori."

Out comes his pointer finger, pointing right at me. He takes another step closer and bends down a little bit. His brown eyes are filled with storm clouds. He looks a lot like he did the day he opened the barn, when he tried to give Carl a gun, told him to take care of Lori.

And I knew it, I knew this would happen. Drop Carl's name, this is who Shane becomes. Maybe this is who Shane really is.

"Sydney," he says lowly, "You tell me what's goin' on right now."

We have a stare-down for a few moments, because he didn't promise. I wait. He waits.

Finally I have to remind myself that our parents not finding out isn't the most important thing here.

And so my hand – which is only trembling because I need food – my hand goes to my waistband. I have to reach up and under my dad's baggy shirt, and then I pull out the bad-memory gun and hand it to Shane. "This is my dad's," I say simply. "Carl, um . . ." No, no, can't say _um_, have to sound sure, like a grownup, _confident_, like Mom. "He took it from my dad's motorcycle. Yesterday."

Shane stands upright, looking from me to the gun. "Why?"

Because he's Carl.

"Shane," I say, and it feels weird to say his name right to him, "Dale's dead because of us. Because of Carl and me."

No tears. Still out of them. Still empty. Thank God.

"What are you talkin' about? Dale got bit by a walker. Carl and you –"

"We saw that walker." And screw eye contact, screw it. Just being here's hard enough. The car's taillight is where my eyes have landed, the simple, never-judging taillight. "In the swamps. After Carl got my dad's gun –"

I should've stopped him, I should've stopped Carl.

"– that's where we went, the swamps. The walker . . . The walker was stuck in some mud."

I should've made Carl leave.

"We threw rocks at it and then Carl was gonna shoot it but it got out first. We ran away and then, and . . . And then that walker got Dale."

Ripped him apart.

And now Dale is dead and it's because of me. Me and Carl. Carl, who's convinced he's not strong and who's being crushed by the stupid self-blame.

"Why're you tellin' me this?" Shane says after a minute.

"Carl ain't strong enough."

I wait for Shane to jump at this, to tell me I'm wrong, to tell me that Carl's everything a twelve-year-old should be.

He doesn't. And I don't take the time to ponder that. I'm dizzy, anyway.

"I don't know why," I continue. "It's just –" And here I struggle for an explanation. A reason. I get nothing, so I meet Shane's eyes again, needing him to take me seriously, and just say, "Look. It's our fault Dale died."

He shakes his head. "Sydney, now –"

"It's our fault," I repeat. I have that simple tone again, the one that I hope means I'm not up for listening to any arguments. And before Shane can even try – if he plans on trying, I mean – I nod at the weapon in his hands. "I-I offered Carl the gun. And he wouldn't take it."

"Your dad's gun?"

Guilt.

I shake it off, I push it down. "My dad's a grownup. He can get another gun. But Lori and Rick don't want _Carl_ to have one, and he needs one, and I know you think that, because you tried to give him one once. The day . . . The day you opened the barn."

"That was different." He says this to the gun, and I'm getting to him, I know it, so I inch closer.

"But you think I'm right, don't you?"

He looks at me without moving his head. He doesn't say anything.

I shift my weight from one foot to the other. I want to bite my knuckle, don't. "I think . . . I think you should talk to him. I think you should tell him that it wasn't his fault. He might believe you."

Look at me, telling a grownup what to do.

"And even if he doesn't . . . I, I think you should give him the gun. Everyone should have a gun now. Even kids. And I think it might make him feel better about things. About himself. I think he'll feel . . . tougher. And I just . . ." And I'm just rambling, that's what. I scowl and bow my head. Is this what it's like to be a grownup? I don't like it, I don't want it. "Just tell him it wasn't his fault, please?" I finish, and my voice sounds like a sigh.

A moment of quiet, until Shane finally says, "Okay, I'll talk to him," and it sounds almost like he's saying this to himself, but whatever, as long as he does it.

"And don't tell his parents," I remind him.

"I'll talk to him."

Which, once again, is not a promise. But I've done what I can, and Shane's going to talk to Carl, that's what matters. I spin around too fast and walk away, and as I do, I wait for Shane to call after me, to ask if I've told my dad any of this. But he doesn't. If I had to bet, I'd bet that Shane's all done with this conversation and has already moved on to the one with Carl.

Good.

With my dad's gun gone, I feel lighter and heavier all at once.

. . . . .

Earlier on, my dad and I claimed a corner in the dining room. Right by some windows, so Dad can look out, which I know makes him feel better. I go to that corner now, wrapping my arms around me and lowering my head, trying to get past the others without any holdups. I do. I walk right by T-Dog, Maggie. Even past Lori, who smiles but doesn't say anything. I don't see Carl. I don't look for Carl. Hell, I may never again talk to Carl.

That's stupid. I'm just tired. And I should try to eat something. But the thought makes me gag. I stare at my dad's and my corner. It's pretty bare. And it's loud around me and my head hurts.

I remember something.

Next thing I know, I'm in the room Carl and me and Beth and Jimmy were in just last night. Listening while Dale made his case, minutes before he would die. There are bags on one of the flowery couches but no one's in here. Those flowery couches, and the white curtains, and that stupid vent in the corner, it all makes me tense and my old friend instinct tells me to _go go go_, but the second I sit on the piano bench, I'm calm.

The keys are dusty. I wonder if it's because no one knows how to play or just because no one's felt like it. I trace over the smooth surface of the keys, gently, stroking the dust off, leaving me with gritty fingers. I think this piano's bigger than Mom's. About the size of Nana and Papaw's, maybe.

Mom and Papaw used to play together. They knew every song in the world. Sometimes one of them would play and the other would sing, and Nana would complain that she felt left out, and I was taken over by the music and the smells of potpourri and strong perfume and something baking, because there was always something baking at Nana and Papaw's house.

"Do you play?"

My fingers turn into sticks, all straight and stiff. I keep them on the keys, though. "No," I lie.

I hear her footsteps nearing, and then Andrea sits slowly down on the bench beside me, facing the doorway. She has a smile on her face, and it's a tight smile, but it's still nice. "I took lessons for a while, as a kid. Quit after a month." She reaches out and presses down one key, letting an E note ring out through the room, and for just a second it's the only sound I hear, and then it's gone and the soft mumblings from the others in the rooms around us is back, and now Andrea's talking again.

"You were very brave last night," she says softly. "Putting that walker down."

It wasn't in time, though. It wasn't in time. I put my hands together in my lap, so they won't be tempted to play anything on this pretty piano. I don't deserve the music right now. And playing like that, it's not me anymore, it's not me. But Andrea . . . Andrea's right here and I have to tell her . . .

"You were brave, too. Taking Dale's side."

She doesn't ask how I know that. She just looks away. She misses him already. Me, too. But at least she's not –

I squeeze my eyes shut, open them, and say, "I'm sorry I called you a bitch."

She laughs, just a little bit, even though little water drops are gathering up on the ends of her eyelashes. "Sorry I shot your dad."

. . . . .

"But why's it gotta be you?" I'm asking later, resting my head on my arms as they cross over the porch rail.

Dad leans on the rail beside me. "Rick asked me to go with him."

"You coulda said no."

"Wouldn't be very nice."

I lift my head just to tilt it, give him Mom's special _be serious _look.

"Syd, I thought you'd be happy that we're lettin' Randall go."

"I _am_. But when Rick and Shane took him out last time, they ran into a lotta walkers. They came back all beat up."

"That ain't gonna happen this time."

I'm about to ask why Shane doesn't go with Rick today, too, and leave my dad here so he can be with his kid and the rest of the group, when suddenly Dad frowns and reaches a hand out, pressing it on my forehead. "You okay? You're pale."

"I'm fine," I mutter, pulling my head away.

Dad's arm drops. He looks at me for a minute – I don't look back, but I feel his eyes on my skin – and then he says, "Thought you weren't gonna be mad at me?"

He means the spanking. That seems like a long time ago, seems like nothing. "I ain't," I tell him, pressing a fist into my eye, and I mean it. I just need food and I can't eat and my dad's leaving to do something dangerous and Dale's dead and I didn't sleep long enough last night and Carl's worrying me and I lied to Dad, I lied to Dad, I lied to Dad. And now he's standing right here and I don't want to let him down anymore, I'm tired of letting him down, and so I lean into him before he can say anything else and throw my arms around him.

Dad uses both hands to smoothe down my hair before making me look up and into his eyes. "Little Bit, you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah."

"I promise I'll get back all in one piece."

I press my face into his shirt. I'm crying a minute later. My tears are back. I'm not empty anymore, and I miss being empty, I liked empty.

"Hey, hey," Dad says, crouching down. I grip his shoulders, he grips my elbows. One elbow. The other hand cups my face. "Babe, what's goin' on? This about me, Dale, what?"

He doesn't even know, he doesn't even know.

I can't do this.

The blame's too much. Maybe I'm not as strong as I thought. Maybe the blame's just really heavy, I don't know, I don't, but –

_I can't do this._

"I-I gotta tell you somethin'."


	35. Trust

I leave out the gun. That's the only part I leave out, and I want to tell Dad about it, I swear I do, but that gun needs to get to Carl.

Everything else, though, I tell my dad everything else. Going to the swamps, seeing the walker, the walker busting out of the mud. I tell him everything as we sit out here, on the end of the porch, the same place where he found me and my coffee the day The Walker Without a Doll came out of the barn. I cry, but Dad's quiet, doesn't say a word the whole time I talk. He's sitting beside me, with me in between him and the rails, and I steal looks at him every now and then. He mostly stares straight ahead and moves his jaw around.

". . . and – and so, when I saw that walker last night, I knew it w-was our walker, Carl's and mine, it was _our _walker, and, and then Dale was on the ground and it was killing him and I couldn't get it fast enough, I – I – I couldn't, and I, I'm, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, I just –"

"Hush." Dad's arm comes around me, squeezing. "You gotta stop cryin' 'fore we can talk. I'm sick of seeing you cry."

I burrow under his arm, clasping my mouth, and after a second his hand starts in on my neck. He says what he always says, _That's enough _and _dry up_, things like that, calls me _baby girl _and _Little Bit _here and there, but his voice is harder than usual. He's angry. He should be. Dale's dead because of me.

And I admit that.

"It's my fault," I whimper. "Mine and – and Carl's, but mostly mine, 'cause I shoulda stopped him –"

"I told you, we ain't talkin' till you quit cryin'."

"But it's _my fault!_"

"Shh. You're gonna bring the whole damn group here. Now calm down, Sydney."

And so I bite my tongue and press my hand to my mouth again and I don't let myself talk for a while. Even though there's so much in my chest, swirling around and fighting to get out, I force it back and get a hold of myself. I calm down, like Dad wants. I need to talk to him, and he needs me to quit crying, it's a fair trade.

He's mad, though.

Maybe I shouldn't have told him. Now he _knows_ I let him down. Lying to him was letting him down, yeah, but at least he didn't know it. I just mess up no matter what I do, don't I?

"Now," Dad says soon. "Let's get somethin' straight here. Dale didn't die 'cause of anything you did."

I pull away from him, look right into his eyes. "Yes he did! If it weren't for Carl and me, the walker would have stayed stuck in the mud! And Dale wouldn't of –"

"Hey. It's my turn to talk."

I close my mouth, panting, and shut my throat against fresh sobs and tears.

"Dale shouldn'ta been out walkin' alone to begin with," Dad says. "Out in the dark, all foggy like it was . . . He shoulda known better."

"But –"

"And you, missy, you shouldn'ta been out in them woods. Sure as hell shouldn'ta gone to the swamps. Stop it," he says, because I've started sobbing again. "You got this comin', kid." Here he rubs my neck some more, which confuses me, but I gulp and he goes on. "You shoulda told me 'bout it. Right when you got back. Sydney Rose, you don't hide stuff from me. Ever."

"I know . . ." My hands are on my knees, and my skin and the denim are all running together, fuzzing out, and my face is so hot and I feel like I'm floating. "Dad, the walker got Dale . . ."

"It coulda been any walker, Sydney. Just so happens it was that one. I told you, Dale shouldn'ta been out there."

Doesn't he get it? Doesn't he understand? "It was . . . It was _our _walker . . ."

"Little Bit, that don't matter."

"Yes, it does!"

His arm is loose over my shoulders. I think he rubs his face, and then he looks at me and says, "D'ya know Merle was supposed to go huntin' with me? Back in Atlanta?"

No, I didn't know that.

"But me, I wanted to go alone. So I left without him, when his back was turned. Turns out, I come back, and he's got left in the city."

I don't know what to say to that. Dad, he just keeps looking at me, this powerful look that I don't know what to do with. "You think I don't feel guilty for that? Think I don't tell myself it was my fault?"

I don't know what to say to that, either.

"Well, guess what? It ain't my fault. _Merle_ decided to go into the city. _He_ decided to get himself handcuffed to a pipe, and _he _decided to cut off his hand before I could come and save his ass. And baby girl, _Dale _decided to go out walkin' in that field, in the dark, all alone." Dad pulls me into him, wrapping both arms around me. "It ain't your fault. You hear me? It ain't your fault."

"Dad –"

"It _ain't . . . _It ain't."

And I want to believe him, I want to believe him so much.

But I just don't.

. . . . .

"Eat, Syd."

I blink down at it, at the small hunk of meat in my hands. Rabbit. My favorite. I look up at Dad. "I'll throw up."

"Well, then, we'll try again later." He leans against the house. We're out back, all alone, just us and a truck and the forest, about fifty feet away. I'd like to be in the forest. I'm about to ask Dad if we can go there when he kneels down beside me. "C'mon, you gotta eat. Just take one bite."

I made the mistake of telling him about me not eating. About me puking earlier. In my fit of honesty, I let it spill, and now I have to eat this dumb piece of rabbit, this piece of rabbit that might as well be mud in my hands.

"One bite, Sydney."

And so I take a bite. It's worse than the peach, it's all greasy and crunchy and suddenly I don't like that, and I gag but not bad and I chew really fast and swallow.

"'Kay," Dad says. "Now another."

"You said just one."

"Now I'm sayin' one more. C'mon."

And so I rip into the rabbit again. It's disgusting, it's absolutely disgusting.

Dad's hand is on my back as I force it down. "Good," he says. "Keep goin'."

But I barely hear that last part because I've turned and emptied both bites of rabbit and a little burning watery stuff out of my stomach. Dad holds back my hair. I finish, cough – it _hurts _– and manage to choke out, "Told ya."

"Yeah, yeah," Dad murmurs, stroking my back. "You're smarter'n me, no contest."

We prepared for this. Dad brought a plastic water bottle out here, never even been opened. We go and sit on the steps of the back porch – which is much smaller than the front porch, just a little wooden deck of a thing – and I lean on my knees and take tiny sips of water that I don't want but that Dad says I need.

"I ain't gonna be back till after dark," Dad tells me, watching as I drink. "You gotta keep downin' water. Keep tryin' to eat every coupla hours."

Just thinking about food makes me gag again and I almost can't swallow.

"I'ma tell Carol and Lori 'bout this. They'll make sure ya do it."

For a second I'm hurt that he doesn't trust me to mind and then I remember that I've taken away any and every reason why he should.

And damn it, I've got to get that trust back. I need it. Not much matters to me anymore, but that does. A lot.


	36. Killers and Ants

It's late afternoon. My dad and Rick are getting ready to leave when T-Dog runs up and tells them that he can't bring them Randall, like he was supposed to, because Randall is gone.

Gone. From his handcuffs, from the shed. Gone.

My dad tells me to get in the house. I do, but I run in so fast that Patricia is startled. She asks what's wrong, and I tell her, because she's a grownup, and then the next thing I know everyone in the house is running outside, and it's like that awful day when Andrea shot my dad, it's like that all over again, only now everyone runs straight over to the shed instead of standing and staring. My dad and Rick, T-Dog and Andrea, they're already there, and why has Andrea been out here? But that's not important, not important at all. The door of the shed is open and my dad's stepping out just as me and the others get to the shed. Dad, he barely look at us. He paces away, and I can't see his face, but his walk is strong and fast and I know it doesn't mean anything good.

"The cuffs are still hooked," Rick tells someone as he comes out of the shed, the dark, empty shed. "He must've slipped 'em." His voice is hard.

"Is that possible?" Carol asks breathlessly.

And now it's Andrea's turn to appear from the shed. "It is if you've got nothing to lose."

My dad's off a ways, with T-Dog. He's staring out at the woods with his crossbow in his arms.

"The door was secured from the outside," says someone, I think Hershel – my focus is on Carl at this point. He's with his mom, of course, and Lori, she has both of her hands on his shoulders. Carl's looking at the shed, the shed where Randall was, the shed we sneaked in to. And now Randall's escaped. Oh, God, did we do this somehow? Are we to blame for this, too?

No, no, that's stupid, that doesn't make sense. But how –?

_"Rick!"_

That yell grabs all of us, pulls us in, tugs our heads and eyes and ears towards the forest, to the figure striding out of it. Shane. _"Rick!"_

There's blood on his face. Rick brushes past me.

"What happened?" Lori shouts.

"He's armed!" barks Shane, striding nearer, hands in fists like mine are sometimes. "He's got my gun!"

And something my dad said, back when we had the bad fight, back when I told him I was afraid of him: _He ain't a good guy, Little Bit._

And now he has a gun. Ain't-a-good-guy has a gun.

Carl's asking if Shane's okay, Shane's yelling that he is, that Randall just sneaked up on him and knocked him down. He's close enough to not have to yell, but he yells anyway, because all of this is bad, it's so bad, and Rick, Rick's yelling now, too.

"Alright – Hershel, T-Dog! Get everybody back in the house! Glenn, Daryl, come with us."

I don't like this plan, I don't like this plan. But Dad's loading an arrow into his crossbow.

"T." Shane moves towards T-Dog, pointing, "I'm gonna need that gun."

"Just let him go," Carol says hurriedly, her voice even higher than usual. "That was the plan, wasn't it, to just let him go?"

"The plan was to cut him loose far away from here," Rick replies darkly, angrily, "Not on our front step _with a gun!"_

Shane snaps up T-Dog's gun right next to me. He spins and moves away, hunched over, moving with a stiff kind of fury that scares me and that will surely put the fear of God in Randall if they find him. I look to my dad. He meets my eyes right away. He doesn't nod or smile or wink or anything. He just meets my eyes and turns, and I hate it, I hate it, and I have to work not to chase after him.

"Don't go out there!" Carol pleads. "Y'all know what can happen!"

The Walker Without a Doll.

Nobody listens to Carol. Over his shoulder, Rick orders – again – "Get everybody back in the house! Lock all the doors and stay put!"

"Dad . . ." I say, too quietly to hear, barely even a whisper, but suddenly – I'm sorry, Dale, I'm sorry – I wish they'd gone through with killing Randall, and a part of me screams that that's wrong but Randall's out here somewhere with a gun and my dad, my _dad _is going looking for him, and if Randall hurts Dad I swear to God –

"Hey!" Someone grabs me and pulls, pulls away from the woods and my dad. "Come on, Sydney, come on!"

It's T-Dog. I don't . . . I don't . . .

I'm no good out here.

So I follow the others back to the house, fast, because there's a maybe-killer on the loose.

. . . . .

This house has lost its charm. Its feeling of home, of safety, of nothing-bad-can-happen-here. All of that good stuff began draining out last night, with the conversation over whether or not to kill Randall, and now that good stuff is just about all gone. It's cold in here and it's not just because winter's coming.

The others keep busy. Start _nesting. _Rolling out sleeping bags, setting up cots, throwing blankets onto couches. Me, though, I ignore my dad's and my corner and walk around, keeping in the background of every scene, staying unnoticed but being noticed enough that no one has to wonder where I am. It's the best way I can think of to keep myself alone.

I avoid Carl. That's the only person I avoid. I need to ask him about the gun, I know that, it's nagging at me and making me anxious. I need to see if the gun got to him so maybe I can have a little peace of mind. But Dale died last night, and no matter what my dad says, I know Carl and I are responsible. So Carl's just a reminder of bad things right now. And I'm not sure I have the energy to deal with bad things at the moment. So I avoid him.

It gets darker and darker outside until it's flat-out dark. My dad and the others are still out there. The three times I'm in the same room with Lori, I see her check out the nearest window a total of, I don't know, a hundred times. A hundred and one, maybe. Her face is tight, and when she smiles, it's forced.

Carol finds me five minutes after sundown, as I'm sitting in the corner of the living room, watching Maggie and Beth whisper over a picture of someone who I think is their brother, the brother who was in the barn. Carol says I should try and eat something. I know how it'll end, so I don't want to, but I told Dad I would, didn't I? I go into the kitchen and take a thin slice of bread that Patricia baked, and I get a water bottle, too, and then Carol and I go to the bathroom. She gets to watch me choke down five whole bites of bread before it all comes back up into the toilet. She holds my hair like Dad did, but it's different, and I want _him_ here and I hate Randall and they should've killed –

I'm sorry, Dale.

Then I sit on the closed toilet seat and Carol sits on the edge of the bathtub. I want to leave, I want to be alone, I want to hide in the background some more, but the room is spinning. I'm tired and the room is spinning, spinning, spinning. I'm almost positive I see Carol's hand move an inch or two into the air once – into the air and closer to me? – and then settle back on her knee. Good. I don't know how her touch would have felt.

We nearly run into Lori in the hallway. Worry is all over her, in her eyes and lips and in her hands as they twist and untwist a pillowcase. "Hey, Sydney? You talked to Carl lately?"

I rub my temple, the way Mom used to when she got a headache. Like the one I have now. "Uh, no. I don't think so."

Except when I talked to him this morning to try and give him back the gun he stole from my father. Want to know about that, Lori?

"Well, um, he just went upstairs. I think . . . I think it might be good for him to have some company. Do you mind?"

Yes, I mind. I mind with everything I got, I mind. But this isn't the kind of question you can say no to. This is the kind of question a grownup asks you when they're trying to be nice about _telling_ you to do something. So me, I nod. I be a good girl and I go up the creaking stairs into the quiet to find Carl. The Reminder.

It's not hard to find him. He's not hiding or anything. I get up the stairs and the first door on my left is wide open, and Carl's just standing there, by a window. He raises something to his eyes – binoculars. Then he puts them down. I watch him for another minute before I say, "Shane talk to you?"

He twists his upper body around, doesn't move his feet. If I scared him, sneaked up on him or what, he doesn't show it. At least, I don't think so. The moonlight from the window casts a shadow on his face, making it hard to see anything but his eyes. His calm blue eyes. "My dad did."

I tense. "Your dad? Carl, I swear, I asked Shane not to tell him –"

"Sydney, it's okay."

I've ended up in the doorway, my shoulder pressing against the frame, my body wanting to lean on it but not quite sure it's safe. I don't understand, which is nothing new.

Carl reaches for his waistband in a movement I, personally, have gotten pretty familiar with. Out comes the gun. _The _gun. "My dad gave it to me. He wants me to have it." Carl's hand clenches and unclenches the gun. Getting a feel for it? Testing its weight? I wonder if it's as heavy to him as it was to me. "You were right to tell Shane," he says. "Thanks."

I let my eyes fall to the ground as he slips the gun away. I've started leaning on the doorframe after all. It's easier. I'm all weak and trembling.

Carl turns from the window and rests against the wall beside it. We're facing each other now, totally and completely. The binoculars hang from his neck and make the rest of him look smaller. "I – I went over to the barn last night. Right when they were about to do it. Right when my dad was about to shoot Randall. My dad . . . He saw me, and he stopped. And he decided not to kill him. And now . . . Now if Randall hurts someone. . ."

My eyes stay on the floorboards. It's old-looking wood, the kind that might give you splinters but that feels wonderfully sturdy underneath your feet. Keeps you from falling. Protects you.

"That would be my fault," Carl says. "That would be my fault, too."

_Too._

My mom was good at talking to people. Talking them up, talking them down. Making them smile or at least helping them not be quite so sad. Me, I'm not my mom. I'm just not. So I don't tell Carl it's okay, I don't tell him he's a good person, I don't tell him anything helpful. I'm quiet and still.

Then he says, "Dad told me Dale didn't die because of me. Of us."

His tone isn't happy. It's not hopeful.

Carl, he knows that's all bullshit.

And me, I know I was right to ask Shane to get that gun to Carl. It's changed him already. Somehow. I didn't get the blame off his shoulders, no, that plan didn't work. But maybe, maybe now he can handle it. Shoulder the blame and keep going.

Carl's watching me. Does he want a reply? I give him one – a long stare, to which he finally nods, looking over his shoulder and out the window again.

We get each other, don't we?

The blame's all even now.

Thirty minutes later, Carol calls me downstairs and I eat an entire slice of bread and an apple and none of it comes back up.

. . . . .

"How's it feel?" Beth asks.

It feels like there are way too many people watching me right now. But she means the jacket, which is the _reason_ they're all watching me. I'm trying on Beth's jacket, a thick denim coat she outgrew last year. It's too big, but not by a whole lot, not as bad as that shirt of Dad's I was wearing, which is now draped over the back of the couch. I just have to roll up the jacket sleeves a little and it's fine. It's warm, at least.

"This is good," I tell Beth, closing the jacket over me. "I like it. Thanks."

She smiles. She has a good smile, Beth. A little shy but very kind, the kind of smile that makes her into the kind of person that you want to hug. But I don't. Jimmy does, though, or at least he puts his arm around her. Dad used to do that with Mom.

Then it's silence. Beth and Jimmy separate, Beth sits down on the couch, next to Andrea. Jimmy goes to a wall and leans on it, like men do, like T-Dog's doing, like Hershel's doing. Lori's sitting in a chair in the corner. Patricia and Carol are standing with their arms crossed in that baby-cradling way. Carl hasn't come downstairs.

I want to sit down, I want to stand, I want to lean, I want to go back to Carl, I want to go outside and look for my dad –

"I'm going after them," Andrea's saying, standing up, stepping across the room. Yes, yes, I knew I liked her.

"Don't, they could be anywhere," says Lori. She sounds tired. "And if Randall comes back, we're gonna need you here."

Andrea's stopped. My heart sinks a little. Lori's right, of course she's right. Andrea can use a gun and the house might need protection. But my dad's out there . . .

I touch the revolver at my waist.

The door opens, the front door. It creaks and slams, the way it always does, and then my dad and Glenn appear in the archway next to T-Dog.

I loosen up everywhere inside. I end up on the couch, my arms crossed over the back of it and my knees holding me up. My dad's hand – the one not holding the crossbow – finds my head, and that's perfect.

But his eyes go over the room and he asks, "Rick and Shane ain't back?"

"No," Lori and I answer at the same time. Dad's hand slips off of me.

"We heard a shot," he says as I glare at his hand, willing it to come back, let me know everything's fine.

Wait, wait, a shot?

"Maybe they found Randall," says Lori.

"We found him."

"Is he back in the shed?" Patricia asks.

Dad's eyes are on her but his hand comes to me again, this time to my neck, and he starts kneading it as he says, "He's a walker."

_Walker._

After all this, after the debate last night, after Dale going to so much trouble to try to keep Randall alive . . . He's a walker.

The guy with the gap in his teeth who begged Carl and me for help is a walker.

_Was _a walker. My dad and Glenn wouldn't have let one be.

I stare at Dad's crossbow.

"Did you find the walker that bit him?" Hershel asks after a weighted second.

"Weird thing is," says Glenn, softly, like he's delivering hard news, and is it hard news? "He wasn't bit."

No. No, that doesn't make sense . . .

But Dad nods. "His neck was broke."

"So he fought back," Patricia says matter-of-factly.

"The thing is, Shane and Randall's tracks were right on top of each other," Dad explains to the room. "And Shane ain't no tracker. So he didn't come up behind him. They were together."

But Shane said . . .

My stomach hurts. I want to sleep. I want to get Dad and go somewhere and talk about this just with him so he can make it all make sense and then I want to sleep.

But Lori's coming around the couch, coming right up to Dad. "Would you please get back out there and find Rick and Shane and find out what on Earth is going on?"

He doesn't even pause. "You got it."

"Thank you."

No . . .

Dad squeezes my neck one last time. Then he and Glenn are gone. Andrea, too.

I follow them. I'm sick of being inside the house and I want my dad, I want my dad like I'm just a little kid again, and I don't know what my plan is but I go out the door before anyone can stop me.

I find the three of them out on the porch, standing still. Facing away from the door, out at the farm.

Something's wrong.

I almost ask Dad what, but I don't. Instead I edge up behind them, and up next to Dad, and he doesn't say anything about it. I grip the railing and look out.

They're like ants from here. Little black ants, coming for that piece of pie you dropped at a cookout. Only it's night and the pie is the house and the ants are walkers.

A million walkers.


	37. Target Practice

"Oh my God," I breathe.

Dad's hand on my shoulder.

The others come out. There are gasps and someone squeals a little as they see, as they understand. "Patricia," Hershel says, "Kill the lights."

"I'll get the guns," says Andrea.

Footsteps. The door.

I can hear them now. I can hear the million walkers. One big growl, an ongoing snarl that's edging in around us like a fog, thicker and thicker and thicker.

"Maybe they'll just pass like the herd on the highway. Should we just go inside?"

These words pour from Glenn's mouth as fast as water would, barely a pause, no room to take a breath. Panicked. My dad's answer is much more controlled. "Not unless there's a tunnel downstairs I don't know about. A herd that size'll rip the house down."

More controlled but not reassuring.

They're getting closer.

Maybe there are two million.

The door and then Lori speaking. "Carl's gone!"

I whirl around, my hand leaving the railing so fast I feel myself get a splinter.

"He – he was upstairs." Her eyes are wide, wild, her palm is pressed against her chest. "I can't find him anymore."

Glenn says maybe he's hiding. Lori snaps back that he was supposed to be upstairs and then she turns to me. "Sydney –"

"He was up there when I left," I stutter out, "That was – that was fifteen minutes ago, he didn't say anything –"

That's not the answer she wants. "I'm not leavin' without my boy!" she tells the group, her voice breaking, and Carol grabs her.

"We're not, we're gonna – we're gonna look again, we're gonna find him!"

They run into the house just as Andrea comes out of it, the gun bag in her hands. "So many . . ." I hear Glenn mutter, and he's not talking about the guns, he's talking about the herd, the army . . .

And Carl's gone.

"Dad . . ."

"It's okay."

Andrea puts the bag on the floor of the porch, opens it up. Guns are passed around, Glenn has one, Maggie has one, Hershel. Then my dad says, "They've got the numbers, it's no use," and I stare up at him, because I don't know what he means by _no use _and I don't scare easy but I'm scared, and Carl's not here, and I –

"You can go if you want." Hershel's loading up. My dad's eyes flicker between him and the herd.

"You gonna take 'em all on?"

"We have guns. We have cars." The pump of a shotgun.

"Kill as many as we can," Andrea agrees, "Then we use the cars to lead the rest of them off the farm."

"You serious?" Dad says, I think to Hershel. I'm busy watching the walkers. Glenn's right. So many. _No use_, Dad said . . .

But Hershel answers, "This is my farm. I'll die here."

" . . . Alright. It's a good a night as any."

I look up at him, at my dad, to find he's already looking down at me. "But not for you, sweetheart. C'mon."

I'm dazed. Isn't that the word for it? When you feel like you're walking in a dream – or a nightmare – and you're not really sure what to do? Well, no, I am sure what to do – follow Dad. I follow Dad, I follow Dad, I follow him away from the others and down the porch steps. I follow him, jogging, over to Merle's motorcycle. Merle. I miss Merle. Mid-step, Dad grabs me under the arms and swings me up and onto the bike. He leans down. I can see his breath when he talks because it's just that cold. It's a good thing I have a jacket now.

"Here's what's gonna happen – listen, Syd."

He means because my eyes have gotten drawn over to the edge of the farm and the shapes that lurk there. I tear my gaze away from all that, focus on Dad.

"You got your gun?"

I touch it. "Yeah."

"Okay." He walks around me, hooks his crossbow on the back of the motorcycle. "You and me, we're gonna ride around for a while, we're gonna kill as many of these son'bitches we can, and then –" He's back beside me, one hand on my arm – "we're gettin' the hell outta here."

Like Andrea said. "Lead – lead the walkers off."

"I don't know 'bout that. Maybe." He glances over me. I hear them well now. They're really close. The million or two. "Point is, this ain't nothin' but target practice. You're safe. Got it?"

Target practice. With walkers. Well, I've put one down already, haven't I? What's a few more? But Carl – and Carol, and the others –

Not the time. Not the time. Gotta focus on my dad and me. Now.

So I nod. "Got it." I sound normal. Good for me.

"Here." Dad hands me something. A box of bullets. Then he gets on the motorcycle, and I wrap my arms around him, and then the bike starts roaring and we're going, we're going, and it's cold but I barely notice. I press my face into Dad's vest. He's warm and I'm safe, I'm safe, he said so.

Just target practice.

It's only a minute later when we stop. I grit my teeth and I think of Dale, and Mom and Sophia and _everyone_, and then my hand has my revolver in it and I'm looking up, and we're close to the barn, and the barn's on _fire_, it's burning from the inside, and there are walkers all around it, separated from my dad and me by a fence, and a lot are going towards the barn but some are coming for my dad and me, they're close, and there's a _bang _because Dad's shooting and then I'm shooting, too.

I miss the first one I aim for. Then I hit it. Then I keep hitting. Six bullets, and five find their marks. Five walkers down. Just over a day ago I'd never hurt a one. Now I've done in six. Dad yells something as he puts his gun away. _That's my girl, _I think. Then we're going again. We pass by a truck, I can't tell who's in it, but that's one of two vehicles and the RV that are out here. Fighting for the farm, but Dad said it was no use, but we keep on going, don't we?

Twice more we stop, Dad and me, and both times the same scene rolls out. We're separated from the walkers by a fence, we shoot. Reload. Shoot. I lose count. I put so many walkers down that I lose count. I lose count . . .

That last stop, the walkers shove down the fence before my dad gets us away. They come really close, the geeks do. But then we're gone, we're gone. And the RV is close, pointed towards the barn. Dad brings the motorcycle right up to it, and Jimmy's hanging out the driver's window, gun in hand. My dad stands up a little, yells right at Jimmy. It's _so_ loud, between the motorcycle and the gunshots and the growling, and it's hard to hear, but I think he tells Jimmy something about Rick and Shane and the fire – and yes, yes, one of them must've started the fire, to draw the walkers in – and then I hear _circle round _and Dad yells _Go! _as he sits back down, and then Jimmy's driving the RV – Dale's RV – off towards the flaming barn and my dad and me peel away. To another fence, more shooting. Another fence. Then no fence at all. Then another fence. Shooting, shooting, walkers down. Walkers keep coming, though, they just keep coming.

I see the others, ripping up the grass in their vehicles. And over at the house, I see a lone figure standing out front, and the white hair tells me it must be Hershel. But what about Carl? And Rick and Shane? _What about Carl?_

The box of bullets gets lighter and lighter, of course. And then it's too light. And then my dad and me aren't going from fence to fence anymore. Target practice is over. Dad gets us out to the edge of the farm, but not the edge that the walkers came in from. The edge on the other side. Where it's quiet and lonely. Then Dad shuts the bike down and we sit and stare.

The barn is totally overtaken by fire. Shadows of walkers move against it, into it, with it.

No more vehicles. The others are gone. They've left, I guess. Maybe to lead some of the walkers off the farm. But it won't be enough, I know. All this shooting we've done, and it doesn't look like there's any difference. None at all.

The farm is lost.

I hold onto Dad. I feel his hand cover both of my own as they latch together over his stomach.

I'm too tired to cry.

And I want to know where Carl is. Where everyone is. What'll happen and where we're gonna go, all of us or just my dad and me. And not knowing any of that, that's scarier than the herd of walkers.

But I'm too tired to cry.

Too empty.


	38. Return

Yesterday at dawn, I'd put down one walker and Dale was being buried. Today at dawn, I've put down dozens of walkers and my dad and I are on a motorcycle getting away from more.

Dad knows where we're going. He must. I want him to pull over, I want us to talk. But nowhere's safe. Except where he's taking us. Wherever that is.

We're on a dirt road now, a road scattered with cars and the walking dead. This is a bad part of the road. Dad takes a turn, a sharp one, his foot down to keep us upright, and they're close, so many walkers, so close. Reaching and hungry. We speed off and for a while there's peace. Or something like it. The dawn helps. My favorite time of the day. Not even the walkers can take that away from me.

. . . . .

We meet Glenn first. Glenn and Maggie in Shane's car. Close to the highway. Then we meet Carol and T-Dog and Beth and Lori, all crammed in a truck even closer to our destination.

There's no _finding_ them. There's no searching out. They were already coming to the highway, which is where Dad has been heading towards, of course. Back to the highway, where everything started. Where the RV broke down and Carl and I shared a Snickers and the herd came through and chased away Sophia. The highway.

The others . . . They're alright, they're safe, they're alive, we're a group. But we're not whole.

It's an hour into morning when we finally reach the highway, so the sun's shining and it's beautiful and familiar. The cars light up, dazzlingly bright, decorations on the gray asphalt, the boring grass, the shady forest. Our motorcycle leads the two cars in, my dad great at getting through this, this lake of cars.

My dad. I love him so much.

I don't know if my dad sees them first or if I do. Maybe it's at about the same time, because I think Dad starts slowing the bike down just around when my eyes catch on the three people standing behind a red station wagon with their guns out. And of course they aren't just any three people. Of course, somehow, they're Rick and Hershel and Carl. Carl, his dad's hat on his head, my dad's gun in his hand. Carl.

Dad brings the motorcycle to a stop just a little ways from them, in a small clearing the lake of cars has left for us. Trash is scattered across the ground, still, and I can see the white car I got the Snickers from just over there. But was it me? It was so long ago . . .

The motorcycle quiets and I swing my leg over the seat and jump down. I'm shaky. I grab my dad's knee to steady me. My eyes find Carl's. Things happen around me – my dad and Rick shake hands, the cars park and people get out. But for just a second, one second, it's blue eyes on blue eyes, kid to kid.

He's alive.

He smiles at me.

My friend.

Then someone's thanking God. Lori. Carl's gone, then, racing off to his mother. She's crying. Rick's right behind his son, and then arms wrap around me from behind. Dad. I've been with him all night, but it feels like we've barely seen each other. I hold onto his arms and rest my head on one of them as the reunions around us continue. The Grimes family on their knees, hugging. Beth curled up against her father while Maggie leans into them both. Carol speaking behind me, Dad speaking back. Rick standing and speaking, then Dad talking again. Rick smiling and then not smiling anymore. That means I'd best start listening. I don't want to, I'm so tired. But I need to pay attention, I need to hear.

". . . the only ones who've made it so far," Rick says.

Lori rises to her feet, grin fading. "Shane?"

Rick shakes his head.

That means Shane's dead.

I look at Carl but he's looking at the ground. His smile's gone, too. Where did he go last night? What happened? I hold my dad's arms closer.

"Andrea?" Glenn asks. His neck is splattered with blood.

"She saved me, then I lost her," answers Carol softly. "We saw her go down."

Andrea? Andrea . . .

It goes on like that. Hershel asks after Patricia, she got pulled away from Beth. Beth asks after Jimmy, Rick saw him go down in the RV . . . when it got overrun. The RV, Dale's RV. Nowhere to be found. Overrun. Left at the farm.

Carol goes back to discussing Andrea. Asks the others if they're sure they saw her go down, because maybe Carol just saw something else.

"There were walkers everywhere . . ." says Lori.

"Did you see her?" presses Carol.

Nobody answers.

My dad pulls his arms from me. Steps toward the bike. "I'ma go back."

Forget being tired. Forget being hungry. My hands clamp onto one of Dad's so quickly and strongly that you'd never guess how low on fuel I am. "Dad, no!"

Rick says _No _at the same time I do. Rick's a good leader. I like Rick. Dad's stopped, his hand still trapped between both of mine, and his eyes go from me to Rick. "We can't just leave her."

"But we don't even know if she's there!" I insist, breath hard to find. He's not leaving. Not after tonight, not after everything, not after what I saw at that farm. He's not going back, I'm not letting him.

"She isn't there," Rick says. "She isn't. She's somewhere else, or she's _dead_. There's no way to find her."

That's harsh. That's cold. But Dad's still. So okay, Rick, okay, you're right.

"So we're not even going to look for her?" Glenn says.

"We gotta keep movin'," answer Rick. "There've been walkers crawlin' all over here."

At first I think I'm imagining the growl. I do that sometimes, when I'm really tired – I think I hear something or see something that doesn't exist. But not this time. This time I look past my dad as T-Dog's talking about heading east, and I see it, I see a real, moving walker. In a checkered sweater like my Papaw might have worn. I squeeze Dad's hand and nod at it, but I think he's already seen. He gently pulls away from me and goes for his crossbow. "Stay off the main roads," he says to the group as he gets the weapon from my uncle's bike, "The bigger the road, the more walkers – the more assholes like this one." He's in front of the motorcycle, he's raising his crossbow. "I got him."

And he gets him.

_It._

. . . . .

Dad pulls me to the side a minute later. He literally takes me to the side of the road, actually, and he crouches down to my eye level. "You ever eat anything?" he asks, which – whether I'm hungry or not – is the most insignificant question I've ever heard. That somehow makes me smile, though. Somehow I smile.

"Yeah. Some bread and an apple."

He nods. He's tired, too. There are circles under his eyes. But we're leaving in just a minute, no rest, not yet. We have to get out of here. Go east. Dad's sleepy eyes scan over my head and land back on me. "Want you to ride with Rick and them. Get some sleep."

"No, I wanna ride with you."

"No, Syd."

"Dad –"

"Y'know, the older you get, the more'n more you get like your mom. Can't help but argue, can ya?" He straightens out my new jacket. He doesn't ask where I got it, probably just guesses. It occurs to me that I left his shirt back at the house, along with nearly everything else to my name – and now I'm about to freak out, because Mom's picture – no, no, Mom's picture is in one of the motorcycle bags. We're good.

Dad, he says, "You just do what I tell ya for now, and we can squabble 'bout it later, 'kay?"

As if I'll ever be able to change his mind once he's got it set. "'Kay."

"Daryl!" Rick calls. Dad and me both turn to him. He's over by the red station wagon he was beside when I first spotted him. We're ditching the truck for that thing, which has better gas mileage, apparently. "Ready when you are."

Dad gives a nod. Then there's a pause. "Hey."

I wait.

"You really kicked ass."

And it's cold this morning, so cold, but that makes me warm inside and I smile. Then I stop. Because this doesn't make sense. "Dad. Why didn't you want me to kill that first walker?"

He'll know what I mean. The one in the woods, in the basketball shorts, tall and easy to hit and ready to be taken down.

"'Cause," he says to my jacket.

"Dad."

He moves his hands to my arms. "It don't matter, Little Bit. Not anymore."

I stare at him and will him to change his mind. But when he looks me right in the eye, I know he hasn't. He's standing now. "What matters is that I'm damn proud of you." Then he swipes at my head and I dodge away. I'm still fast, even though I'm tired.

And he said he's proud of me. Actually _said_ it.

"Go on, get in the car."

And so I go, walking with my hands in my jacket pockets. I head straight towards the red station wagon, which means I pass by a few other cars, and one of them has a stack of ruined food on top of it. A message scribbled in white on the windshield. One word is still readable, just one: _Sophia_.

I brush my fingers over the car's cool surface as I pass.

. . . . .

Rick drives the station wagon. T-Dog rides passenger, Lori gets the right back window and I get the left. Carl's in the middle. His dad's hat – _his _hat – rests on his knee. There's an open science book in his lap from the second I get in the car. He works problems for ten minutes or so, barely speaking. I'm feeling a little irritated by it, really, until there's finally a point when he glances over to his Mom – her head is against the window and her eyes are outside – and then casually slides half of the book into my lap.

At the bottom of the page, next to a picture of a giraffe eating leaves, is a scribbled note.

_Shane turned. I put him down._

I reread this note three times before I check Lori and then take the pencil from Carl's hand.

_You good?_

He takes the pencil back.

_Had to be done. _

What do I say? I'm sorry? No. It's like when he told me his mom was pregnant, and I couldn't tell him congratulations. It just doesn't fit, not when it's between us.

So instead I write:

_You: 1_

_ Me: 50_

_ Your move, city boy._

And when Carl reads this, he smiles. Shane's dead, Carl blew out the brains of walker-Shane, and Carl's smiling.

But I'm smiling, too, so what does that say about me?


	39. Infected

"Damn!"

That's the sound that wakes me up. Well, either that or this weird clanking noise –

My eyes open and I'm in a car with Carl and his family. And T-Dog. The car's a station wagon. And now I remember. Everything.

"What's wrong?" Lori asks. Asks the front seat, asks Rick.

Rick, he was the one who spoke before, I think. He speaks again now. "We've been riding red for the past hour."

That means we're almost out of gas.

"Better make sure we don't get forgot," says T-Dog, so Rick honks the horn once as the car slows, and the honk makes me flinch. Necessary, maybe, put it could bring walkers. I'm not up for more walkers.

We stop and I slide out of the car and into icy air. Icy? Already, this early in fall? I slam my door just a split second after Rick slams his. We're on a long road, a road that's covered in dead leaves, that cuts through the middle of colorful forest. There's always a forest.

Maggie and Glenn and Hershel and Beth are getting out of the other car as I pass it by, and then there's my dad, twisting on the motorcycle to look back at Rick as he jogs up. Carol's getting off the motorcycle – why was Carol riding the motorcycle?

"You out?" Dad asks Rick.

"Runnin' on fumes."

"We can't stay here," says Maggie. There's a rifle cradled in her arms. In Glenn's and Hershel's, too. My revolver's still safe in my waistband.

"We can't all fit in one car," Glenn says as the whole group closes in around my dad's motorcycle.

"We'll have to make a run for some gas in the morning," says Rick.

"Spend the night here?" Carol says.

"It's freezing." Carl. He has a jacket on but he's shaking. I pull my own jacket tighter around me, because it _is_ cold – like I said, icy. But nothing I can't handle.

Dad tugs me over to him, though, and he's rubbing my arm as Lori tells Carl, "We'll build a fire, yeah?" And then Rick's walking over to his son, taking off his jacket, giving it to him. Dad doesn't have on a jacket. He'd do the same for me if he did, I know. Right now he's talking.

"You go out lookin' for firewood, stay close." His arm leaves me – it's cold, it's cold – and he takes his crossbow from the bike. "Only got so many arrows – how you doin' on ammo?"

"Not enough." Rick's pacing back and forth. I look out into the woods, in front of me, behind me. Empty, it looks like, just trees and plants. Full of shadows, though – be easy to hide –

But walkers aren't smart enough to hide.

There's a stone structure behind me, a little manmade valley with rock on three sides of it, a waterfall coming down one of those sides. It probably used to be part of a park. I don't like what it is now. The stone looks threatening, like the castle of the bad guy in a movie.

I inch closer to Dad, even though his arms are filled with his crossbow.

Maggie says we can't sit here with our asses hanging out and Hershel tells her to watch her mouth, tells everyone to stop panicking and listen to Rick. I'm not panicking, though, I'm not. Dad just searched the woods, too, I saw him, and he doesn't say anything, so it's safe.

"Alright, we'll set up a perimeter," Rick decides. "In the morning, we'll find gas and some supplies . . . We'll keep pushin' on."

"Glenn and I can make a run now, try and scrounge up some gas," offers Maggie. And that's a good plan. I don't like it here much, here in the middle of the woods, right by a road . . . It's so open and I miss the farm.

I want another farm.

But Rick says no. He says we stay together. "God forbid something happens and people get stranded without a car."

"Rick," Glenn says softly, "We're stranded _now_."

_Stranded_. That's an ugly word.

"I know it looks bad, we've all been through hell and worse, but at least we've found each other." Rick looks us over, his eyes sharp. He swallows. "I wasn't sure, I really wasn't, but we _did. _We're _together_. We keep it that way."

Carl's shaking, even in his dad's jacket. I'm a good seven feet from him and I can still hear the rattle in his breathing. See him trembling. And now I'm trembling, damn it, it's cold . . . _Stop, _stop trembling . . .

Rick says we'll find shelter somewhere. He says there has to be a place, and yes, there must be, there must be another farm, right?

But Glenn steps forward, closer to Rick, still speaking in that soft voice. "Rick, look around. Okay? There's walkers everywhere. They're – they're migrating or something."

Does Rick even hear him? His eyes are off, he's talking fast, he's moving his arms. "There's gotta be a place, not just where we hole up, but that we . . . _fortify_. Hunker down. Pull ourselves together, build a _life_ for each other! I know it's out there, we just have to _find it!"_

He's almost snarling at the end of that sentence. An extra-strong shiver runs through me, and what's bad, what's bad is that I'm not sure how much of it has to do with the cold.

"Even if we do find a place . . . And we think it's safe . . . We can never be sure for how long." Maggie's looking at Rick. With a worried face, a face I don't like, and even though after last night I shouldn't need to, I still let myself edge up right next to Dad. One of his arms abandons the crossbow for me, starts rubbing again. I warm my face up in his shirt as Maggie adds, "Look what happened with the farm."

I press my face deeper into Dad's stomach because now my head is filled with fire, with trucks ripping up dirt, and the motorcycle's rumble, and snarls and gunshots and blood, blood, blood –

"We fooled ourselves into thinking that that was safe," finishes Maggie. Here, on the road, the cold road in the daylight, no walkers nearby, Dad right here with me. No fire or blood.

"We won't make that mistake again," Hershel tells Maggie gently, turning his eyes from her to Rick. And I can tell, I can tell that Hershel's thinking that Rick's the leader now. Last night we were on Hershel's farm, but now we're here and Rick's totally in charge.

Everything's so different than it was last night . . . With Shane and Andrea and Jimmy and Patricia gone . . . and the RV gone . . .

And me with all those walkers under my belt.

"We'll make camp tonight," Rick's saying. "Over there." He points. I look. It's the stone structure, the structure that's like a villain's castle. Great. "Get on the road at the break of day."

"Does this feel right to you?"

Carol. Carol, being quiet, and I look up and she's talking over my head at Dad. Eyes all squinted up and on my dad. I don't know what she means, and right now, I can't make myself care. I want to leave or I want to make camp so I can warm up and sleep some more.

"What if walkers come through?" Beth's saying, louder – she's saying it right to Rick, stepping up to him and everything. "Or another group like Randall's?"

"You know I found Randall, right?" Dad says. To Rick, of course. "He'd turned, but he wasn't bit."

I'd almost forgotten about that. With everything last night . . . I'd almost forgotten about Randall. About his broken neck.

"How's that possible?" Beth asks.

"Rick, what the hell happened?" Lori finally speaks up, staring at her husband, brown hair blowing over her face and Lori just completely ignoring it, just watching Rick, just waiting.

Waiting.

But it's my dad who speaks first.

"Shane killed Randall," he says. It's not a question. I wouldn't even call it a guess, I think Dad simply _knows_, because he's smart. "Just like he always wanted to."

My head cranes back so I can see him, but his eyes are on Rick. Shane . . . Shane killed Randall, then. Alright, I can stomach that. Randall had a gun –

No, no, Rick was with Shane last night, he would have known if Shane killed Randall sometime around then . . .

So Shane must've killed Randall before.

The road tilts under my feet.

"And then the herd got him?" asks Lori.

I watch Rick. Wait for an answer, the answer that fits all of this together, like a puzzle, like a beaded bracelet. Rick'll make it make sense. Rick, Rick's a good leader. Better than Shane – rest in peace, Shane – better than Shane was. Rick'll explain.

"We're all infected."

The thing about fall is that the birds go on break. There are less leaves for the wind to rustle and some of the animals are already asleep. So when I say silence comes over us, I mean it. Absolute silence. Really, though, not even the few leaves that are left rustle, and the remaining awake animals – on the ground or otherwise – respect the moment. Nature understands. Nature understands what just happened, even if I don't, not entirely.

"What?" my dad says, but it's not the _I don't get it _kind of _what_ that I'm feeling in me. It's a _Did I hear you right? _kind of _what. _

It's not a good kind of _what._

And Dad's hand, it's stiffened on my arm. His fingers are like clamps.

"At the CDC," says Rick, looking like stone, "Jenner told me. Whatever it is . . . We all carry it."

And I understand now, too. Like nature, like my dad. Because there's only one kind of _it _Rick would talk about with that tone, that tone that's so heavy his voice can't keep steady as he uses it.

The walker disease. He means we're all infected with the walker disease. He means it's in our blood.

We're all infected.

There's silence again. Full, smothering silence.

Until there's not.

_"And you never said anything?" _I hiss out. Me. Me, the one who almost never speaks up in group discussions. But here I am, here I go, making these fists of mine and baring my teeth and _hissing _at our group's leader.

Because he _never said anything!_

"Sydney –" Dad tugs at me. I break from his grasp, and I don't attack Rick, but damn it, damn it, I'm close.

When he looks at me, when Rick looks at me, his eyes are just a little sad, for just a little second, and then that's gone. "Would it have made a difference?"

_"You've known for weeks!" _Hiss, hiss. The closest I can come to yelling.

Dad grabs me and pulls me back again, three or four yards from Rick, and this time I can't get loose. I know better than to try too hard, anyway, even now.

"Sydney."

Dad's not talking like I'm in trouble. More like he's just trying to get my attention, but when I look up at him, he's looking at Rick. And Dad's not happy, either. He's not. But he doesn't say a word, just uses an arm to keep me pinned to his leg.

"How could I have known for sure?" Rick asks me, Dad, the group, the cold, the world, God, I don't know who he's asking. Who he's talking to. I don't care. Rick doesn't look focused. "You saw how crazy that –"

"That is not your call!" says Glenn, eyes wide. Carol's stepping away. Beth looks on the verge of tears, on the verge of breaking down, because it doesn't make sense, does it, Beth? No, no, it doesn't . . .

So if I died . . .

Glenn's going off, going off in a whisper, but still going off. "Okay – when I found out about the walkers in the barn, I told, for the good of everyone!"

"Well, I thought it best that people didn't know," Rick says evenly.

"You _lied_." I jerk against Dad's arms, more because it feels right than because I want him to let me go, but it causes him to spin me around and push-guide me over to the road's railing. Sort of away from Rick, sort of away from the group, at least enough that they can't hear our whispers. I rest on the railing – fall back on it, really – and I watch Rick walk away, to the part of the road next to all the stone. Lori follows him. Dad sits down beside me and I can't hold back. I don't want to.

"He shoulda told."

Dad props his crossbow on the ground. "Maybe. But he didn't."

My heart's racing. I'm sweating and I'm lightheaded and I feel like I may throw up again and I can't, not in front of everyone, I won't. I put my head in between my knees and cover my neck with my hands, and Dad rubs my back for me.

_We're all infected. _

I listen to the murmurs of the others for a minute, and it's like when I would listen to a song, a boring song in church, and I could hear it again and again and still never know the words.

_We're all infected._

My tongue's dry, but I finally manage to ask the ground, "So . . . So if I die, even if a walker doesn't get me –"

"Baby girl, you ain't gonna die," Dad's leaned down as much as I have, brushing back my hair and murmuring right to me, "Not for a long time, not on my watch."

"But _you _. . . or _them_, any of us . . . Any of us could die, anything could happen, and then we'd be, we'd be –"

We'd be like Randall. Like Sophia . . . like The Walker Without a Doll –

"You can't worry 'bout that."

Oh, yes, yes I can –

Dad gets off the railing, kneels down in front of me. "Sydney, we gotta take this one day at a time. Right now, right now we're all here and we're fine. See? Hey . . ."

I'm not crying. Maybe, maybe I'm finally back to that tough girl that doesn't cry much. Or maybe I'm still just tired, I don't know. Either way, I want to hold tight to my dad, and so I do. And as I put my head on his shoulder, my ear is against his neck and I can hear the _thump . . . thump . . . thump . . ._ as his heart pushes infected blood all through his body.


	40. The Shift

Night again. It seems like night came too early today. It seems like, lately, most of my days have been made up of night.

Our little fire is warm but the ground is cold. And bigger. Dad puts his arm around me and I cozy up against his chest, closing my eyes, and it's just another hunting trip, right? Tomorrow I'll shoot squirrel with my .22 and Merle'll tease me and then Dad'll take me back to Mom's, where I'll shower and eat something delicious and let her sing me to sleep in my soft bed in my private room in my safe house.

One of the reasons I'm able to go there, on this hunting trip where walkers are unheard of and I'm completely safe and sound, is because everyone else is quiet. Quiet is how it should be. It's fitting and it lets my mind go free. But then Carol talks and she doesn't belong on hunting trips and she ruins it and now I'm thrust back into reality.

Not a good reality.

"We're not safe with him – keepin' something like that from us?"

She's whispering, and over the crackling fire, I doubt the others will be able to hear her. No, this is meant just for my dad. So let 'em talk, let the grownups talk about _him, _Rick, about his lies, about how we're all infected with the walker disease. Me, I'm ten and I'm tired and I don't want to talk or even think anymore. I don't want to _feel_ anymore, not tonight.

"Why do you need him?" Carol goes on. "He's just gonna pull you down."

"Nah. Rick's done alright by me." Dad's running his fingers up and down my arm. I don't think he thinks I'm asleep, but I bet Carol does. I doubt she'd be saying this if she knew I could hear.

"You're his _henchman_. And I'm a burden."

At Papaw and Nana's, I'd sometimes watch cartoons, cartoons about superheroes or spies. The villains always worked with people called _henchmen, _usually men, usually big and stupid and easy to trick. My dad's no villain, and he sure as hell ain't no henchman. Carol being a burden? Maybe. But all she has to do is learn how to use a gun, and then she'll be pulling her own weight. Like Andrea. Who's probably dead.

"We deserve better . . . Don't you think Sydney does?"

Dad readjusts the arm around me. "What do you _want_?" he asks, and I don't get this conversation, I just want to sleep. Sleep, Sydney, sleep. You're on a hunting trip. Sleep.

" . . . A man of honor."

And my dad says, "Rick _has_ honor."

Truthfully? I wish he didn't say that. I wish my dad would be mad at Rick, because me? I want to be mad at Rick. It feels like I _should_ be mad at Rick, but it can't be right to be mad at him if Dad isn't. He kept something from us, though, something big . . .

_We're all infected._

Sleep, Sydney. Sleep.

Then there's a sound. Something out in the woods, off behind Maggie and Hershel and Glenn and Beth, off somewhere the trees and the stone hide from our eyes. A snapping sound, dry leaves moving around, and I'm sitting up and wide awake and my hand goes for my knife and Beth's saying, "What was that?"

"Could be anything." Dad keeps an arm on me as he rises, until he gets his crossbow from over his back, which is not reassuring, not at all. I stand, too, watching him, flexing my fingers. "Could be a raccoon," Dad says, "Could be a possum . . ."

"A walker?" offers Glenn.

Everyone's on their feet now, except for Lori and Carl. I eye T-Dog, standing on top of one of the stone walls, gun in hand, keeping watch.

"We need to leave," Carol says, this time to everyone, "I mean, what're we waitin' for?"

"Which way?" asks Glenn.

"It came from over there." Maggie's eyes are in one direction, her rifle half-raised. Something about it reminds me of Buck treeing a squirrel.

"Back from where we came?" asks Beth. Maggie sounds ready, Beth sounds scared.

"Yeah."

"Last thing we need is for everyone to be runnin' off in the dark."

Rick. I look at him now as I grip Dad's shirt. He's been walking around the perimeter, Rick has, and I didn't notice him getting back. "We don't have the vehicles," he says now, "No one's travelling on foot."

Hershel tells one of his daughters not to panic. Maggie, I guess, because then she's saying she's not panicking, but she's not sitting here waiting for another herd to come, and I want them all to stop talking. I want to get back to my hunting trip.

"We need to move, now," Maggie says, and Rick turns on her, finger raised.

"_No one _is going _anywhere."_

He doesn't sound like Rick. He doesn't sound like a man of honor. I shut my eyes.

"Do _something_," Carol says. She's hissing, like I was earlier, before night came and I got too tired.

"I _am_ doing somethin'! I'm keepin' this group together, _alive! _I've been doin' that all along, no matter what – _I didn't ask for this!"_

Then Rick says something he can't take back.

"_I killed my best friend for you people, for Christ's sake!"_

I'd fall over, if not for Dad. Instead I fall into him. Because it's too much, it's too much, all of this and everything, and I want to throw up but there's nothing in me so I just want to sleep. No, I want to see Carl. So I see Carl. I look at him, sitting in his mother's arms. She's kissing the back of his head. He's staring at his dad with his mouth wide open. Because Rick killed his own best friend. Rick killed Shane.

And now I look at him, I look at Rick. Numb inside, I look at Rick. It's like watching a movie or something, something that doesn't really matter, because it's so far-fetched you can't believe it, but you have to watch it because everyone else is.

"You saw what he was like," Rick says, not to anyone in particular. "How he pushed me . . . How he compromisedus . . . How he threatenedus . . ."

Did Shane do all that? Did he? How could I not know . . . Dad and me, we were in a separate camp, but did Dad see?

"He staged the whole Randall thing, led me out to put a bullet in my back. He gave me no choice!"

My dad's rubbing my neck.

"He was my friend, but he came after me . . ."

Carl's crying. Wailing, in a muffled way, probably into Lori's shirt. I don't look. I watch Rick. Rick doesn't look at Carl, either. He looks at everyone else, though, including me. His eyes are wrong. His eyes aren't like Rick's. "My hands are _clean_," he insists. There's a gun in his hand, because he was patrolling. But I wish he would put the gun away. I wish Carl would stop crying, I wish I was on a hunting trip and I wish I could see my mom tomorrow.

". . . Maybe you people _are_ better off without me," says Rick now, which is a strange thing to say. He gestures behind him. Oh. It's a challenge. "Go ahead. I say there's a place for us, but maybe – maybe it's just another pipe dream. Maybe – maybe I'm foolin' myself again." He uses his gun to point at someone – Maggie, Glenn? – and then away, off behind him. "Why don't you – why don't you go and find out _yourself? _Send me a postcard!"

No one says anything. No one does anything. Dad's perfectly still beside me. He knows best. Dad knows best.

"Go on, there's the door. You can do better? Let's see how far you get."

Nothing.

"No takers? Fine. But get one thing straight: You're staying . . ."

I'm not going to like this. I'm not going to like this.

"This isn't a democracy anymore."

Something in the air shifts around and lands right on my heart, weighing it down, making my legs tremble and beg for a rest. Rick walks off again. Leaving that shift untouched, letting it wrap its way all around us, into us, through us. Leaving his son sobbing in his wife's arms. Leaving me almost too tired to care about Carl or the shift or anything.

Almost.

We settle down again. We settle down, because what else can we do? Dad sits again and I lie against him again. He strokes my arm again and I shut my eyes again.

But I don't sleep. The shift changed too much. The shift changed everything.

Except my dad. Except my dad being here. So I find his arm and wrap both of mine around it, pretend it's a teddy bear even though I'm too old for teddy bears, and I listen to Dad's breathing instead of his pulse and I find a peaceful sort of in-between, an in-between of sleeping and being awake, and I stay there and keep my heart calm until the night runs out and it's another dawn. Another beginning, a fresh start. Even after the night, after Rick's speech and after Carl breaking down and after the shift, the dawn manages to give me hope. The warm air and the gray color the sky's taken on when Dad nudges me up to see it all happen, to see this fresh start come to life . . . Hope.

And so I sit there with my dad and watch the new day begin.

**. . . . .**

_**The End**_

**. . . . .  
**

**A.N.: "Sydney: Season Three" is now posted.**


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